


Strange Bedfellows

by ariannenymerosmartell (somethingmoo), shadow13



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Fingering, Older Man/Younger Woman, Oral Sex, marriage AU, rp fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-01-21 17:15:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 44,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12462282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingmoo/pseuds/ariannenymerosmartell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow13/pseuds/shadow13
Summary: The Small Council has declared Sansa shall wed Lord Baelish, to the surprise of both of them. With misgivings and unspoken desires on both sides, it is to be a fraught union. Transcribed from the RP on tumblr.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to Ocularis/Catladyofthecanals for archiving this for us!   
> We update this RP semi-regularly (a couple times a month) at sansasweet.tumblr.com and themerchantofgulltown.tumblr.com

_**Petyr** _

Nervous. The girl looks nervous,  already nibbling delicately at bread and honey. She is lovely though, in a dress of sky blue with a silver sash, that thick auburn hair piled atop her head in a complicated whorl of braids. 

Cat had never worn her hair in such elaborate styles, he muses, but he likes it. Not for the first time he wonders what it would be like to shake loose the braids and watch that hair cascade down her bare back. 

He shakes his head to clear it. It would not do well to break his fast with Lady Sansa and Cersei with those thoughts in his head. Why the Queen had insisted on this meeting he could not say– he wondered idly if the Queen had decided to marry the girl to the Tyrell heir after all– only insisting they be wed in the capitol. It would be a wise move to have the Tyrell boy here as another valuable hostage. 

Cersei has not yet arrived and so he walks in more surely, and makes a bow at the girl. 

“Good day, Lady Sansa. You look lovely this morning. That color quite suits you.”

 

_**Sansa** _

She slept poorly the night before, a hot wind off the bay blowing through her window, like the hot breath of a dog on her skin - or something worse, even. Desert breezes, her maid had said, and brought her a cool, damp cloth to place on the back of her neck to soothe her. 

It had not seemed to help much. This morning, Sansa feels drawn and pale, not at all a fresh and lovely thing. She can feel the heaviness in her eyes and it reduces her appetite, so that she declines most of the breakfast offered her by servants on glittering trays: the scent of thick bacon makes her stomach churn, a plum seems too tart, so that all she’ll accept is hot bread drizzled with honey. What was it Old Nan would feed them when the Stark children were ill? Milk, she remembers, but that feels too much like a child’s drink. Sansa satisfies herself with tea and tries not to make a face at its bitterness. 

So occupied in her mild misery is she, the lady fails to hear the quick tread of the small lord’s boots upon the stone floor. She startles at his greeting and nearly drops her meager meal. “Lord Baelish - good morning.” She blinks blue eyes and looks down at her lap, half-forgetting what she’s been dressed in today. “Oh, thank you. It was a gift from the Queen Regent. She said I am getting too tall for the dresses I brought from ho-” She stops herself with a quick bite to the side of her tongue. “From Winterfell.” Eager to draw attention away from the slip, she presses on: “Her Grace is so extremely thoughtful, wouldn’t you agree? I cannot imagine what could be keeping her…”

Sansa takes another long sip of tea and hopes the Master of Coin will accept the change in subject…

 

_**Petyr** _

“Running a household is hard work, running a kingdom and castle is doubly so, I’d imagine,” he tells the girl smoothly, allowing her the small fantasy that he had not heard the slip of her tongue. 

It is good to hear that the girl still dreams of home. That piece of information will be dear to Cersei,  _ and to Olenna _ , and he can already see the gleam in both pairs of eyes when he tells them. 

Absently, he wonders if she is upset that she would not be running a kingdom or castle. He had seen the relief on her face when Joffrey had set her aside, but still– being wed to Joffrey and being a Queen were two different desires. 

He studies her face, trying to suss out her wants, when the doors open and Cersei Lannister walks in flanked by two white cloaks. Boros and Trant. He loathes them both. One simple, the other mindlessly cruel. 

“Your Grace,” he says, and makes bows at her. “A delight as always, and an honor to be joining you.” 

Cersei gives him a smug smile. “Lord Baelish, silver tongued as always, the honor is mine this morning. I have blessed news for you both.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

“Hard work“ indeed, Sansa could almost scoff. What work does the Queen Regent indulge? She drinks and makes cutting remarks and is dismissed by both her father and her son. Stewards and servants run the castle, Cersei is no Lady of the Red Keep. Her lady mother, she knew how to run Winterfell, and Sansa will do just as well when she goes to Highgarden: she’ll see the household well-run, the larders kept full, the hearths clean and burning…She smiles at the dream of it. Lady Margaery promised her Willas Tyrell, and while he is no strapping young knight, she is certain happiness will again be hers among the roses of the Reach. It’s just a matter of time, Margaery said so.

The dream is over when the Queen Regent enters, and Sansa works quickly to make her face, if not sweet, at least sweetly neutral. It would not do to have Cersei smell her traitorous thoughts, like perfume in the air. She is always careful to look over Ser Trant’s shoulder and never at him; it keeps the bile down. 

“Good morning, Your Grace,” she murmurs in time with Lord Baelish, giving a delicate curtsey with eyes down. She only glances up again as she retakes her seat and hears the Queen mention “blessed news.” Her mind flies to the battlefield, to Robb, and her heartbeat speeds up. “I-Is it about Lord Tywin’s army, Your Grace?”

Sansa resettles her napkin on her lap and bites into her bread to keep from biting her tongue, to keep from letting any fear, any hope show in her face.

 

_**Petyr** _

He almost laughs at the glare that comes to Cersei’s face at the mention of her father’s army. Sansa’s look is meek enough, but he wonders if she knows how much that needles their dear Queen Regent. 

“No,” Cersei sniffs coldly, fixing Sansa with a bitter look. “There has not been word from the Hand yet.” 

Cersei straightens her spine and gives Sansa a look that is purely chilling.

“Have no worries, little dove. Lord Tywin will deal with your traitor brother sooner or later.” 

He does not see Sansa’s reaction– he is too busy marveling at Cersei’s cruelty. Briefly he wonders what Sansa has done to incur the Queen Regent’s wrath in such a manner. She’d been positively in love with the girl when Sansa had come running to her to spill all of Ned Stark’s plans. 

Cersei turns her gaze to him then and gives him a smile that is no less chilling, though it does not phase him. There is nothing Cersei Lannister can do to him. 

“Let us discuss happier things,” Cersei says, motioning for him to sit and he does. 

“Lady Sansa, though I know you are heartbroken yet that Joffrey has decided to wed Margaery, the Small Council feels it would be most cruel not to replace the betrothal with another.” 

He almost smiles then. Cersei is nothing if not predictable. He contents himself with imagining Olenna Tyrell’s face purpling with rage when she is told her precious grandson, her precious heir, will be brought to the keep, a hostage same as Sansa. 

He is so caught up in his imaginings that he almost misses it when Cersei says, “The Lord of Harrenhal, Lord Paramount of the Trident… now there’s a good match for the daughter of a traitor, wouldn’t you say, sweetling?” 

 

_**Petyr** _

_ Was that wrong?  _ No, perhaps not, for she has a witness. Lord Petyr can say, if anyone doubts her loyalty, “Why, the precious child asked most anxiously after the Lannister soldiers - how could her loyalty be in doubt?” Innocent, that is what he called her once. Sansa does not feel terribly innocent any longer, has not for some time, but hopes she still looks the part. 

She keeps her gaze on her breakfast and tries to ignore the waves of ice that come over her, from the Queen’s green eyes.  _ Like venom _ . “I pray for the soldiers every day,” she murmurs; it’s no lie so long as she does not say which. 

Sansa blinks a little at the mention of her broken betrothal, and just stops herself from smiling. She does not even have to say, “I am unworthy of His Grace, I understand,” for the Queen continues - a promise of another betrothal?

_ Margaery has done it _ . She allows the smile to grow just a little, a twinge of hope such as she has not felt since the Battle of the Blackwater. To leave this place, to be free of Cersei and Joffrey and all their machinations; free of the Kingsguard, the endless routine of being watched - she could sing like the dove the Queen calls her. 

_ Sansa Tyrell, Lady of Highgarden, it doesn’t sound badly; the Red Rose - that’s sweet, how Mother will like that. And when Margaery weds Joffrey, she’ll bear him a son she will raise to be good, nothing like the Lannisters, and I shall have a daughter, and they shall be betrothed, and it will all be like it was supposed to be, like Father said in Winterfell, like- _

“The Lord of Harrenhal, Lord Paramount of the Trident… now there’s a good match for the daughter of a traitor, wouldn’t you say, sweetling?“

The world stops, she cannot move. Sansa hears the sound of her blood rushing in her ears, and it sounds like screaming. Without thought, the words come from her lips and she does not hear them: “A traitor’s get deserves none of the kindness you have given me,” and then, with only half a breath of pause, “Is there not some….mistake, Your Grace?”

Sansa’s hands disappear into her lap, beneath the white, linen napkin, and her nails dig half-moon cuts into her palms to keep herself from shrieking. 

 

_**Petyr** _

Her courtesies are so polished, so refined, that were he not the owner of several brothels he might have believed the words that come spilling out of her mouth, half a whisper, but he can hear the scream beneath them.

He can see the scream struggling to let loose when Cersei assures her it is no mistake. 

“You will be the Lady of Harrenhal. Isn’t that lovely?” Cersei turns that dazzling smile to him, eyes triumphant. He wants to slap her. Part of him wants to kiss her. 

He had offered to wed Sansa, of course. He had offered, but he had never dreamt it would be accepted. It hadn’t even hurt when Cersei said it was impossible, that he was much too low of birth. No, even those words had not hurt him. Petyr Baelish had heard them before, from Cat’s own sweet lips. 

But this…

His pulse quickens. He knows he must tread carefully now, so carefully lest Cersei suspect. 

“You honor me, Your Grace,” he says, aware his voice is hoarse. He takes a sip of wine, as though pondering the offer. As though he might refuse. 

“I fear I am too low of birth for the Lady Sansa. I might have risen to be Lord of Harrenhal, but–” here, he shrugs. “I am not fit to wed a Lady of such noble birth as Lady Sansa.” 

He’d repeated the words to himself a hundred times after Cat. They are no easier to say now. 

 

_**Sansa** _

He sounds just as surprised as she is - not his doing, then? In a way, that’s a comfort. And why should he scheme to marry a traitor’s get, a man with his star on the rise,  _ a man who loves my Lady Mother. _

_ Not me. _

Now is hardly the time to be offended, though.

Her shoulders sag with relief in spite of herself, and Sansa tries not to smile, nervously or genuinely. “I should not be a suitable wife to Lord Baelish, then - I could not bear to disappoint anyone His Grace thought so well of. The Small Council might, then….reconsider?”

Cersei’s lips purse, her brow draws in. “One would think I was offering to send you to a leper colony. Lord Petyr, you astonish me. And here Lady Lysa would regale me of an evening your unending love for a maiden of copper locks.” She takes a deep sip of her own morning cup of wine, an early start to the day. “Varys said you would refuse our Little Bird, though. Perhaps no one can blame you.”

Sansa would perhaps blush to be spoken of so, but she’s too pale to have any color on her cheeks.

 

_**Petyr** _

_ Varys _ . Damn the eunuch to all seven hells. Petyr Baelish knows a threat when he hears one,  _ especially _ with the subtle mention of Lysa’s name. He knows not what tales she is telling now– of their  _ grand _ love affair, no doubt– and he barely stops himself from snorting. 

Sansa sounds so…  _ relieved _ when she hears his refusal that he almost hates her for it. The tone sounds the same as Cat’s  _ Please, he he just a boy _ , and underneath the table his hand clenches into a fist. 

_ No _ , he tells himself.  _ Not the same _ . 

He studies the girl’s face and thinks she means that he should not share her punishment– for surely Cersei Lannister is only punishing her. 

_ And she will give her worse if I do not accept _ , he realizes. Lancel or Tyrion, or some other Lannister. Worse some minor house, some fat widower lord. Gregor Clegane. If he does not marry her, her fragile reputation is shattered. 

“I simply meant that the Lady Sansa is of a most noble birth,” he says, giving Sansa the most genuine smile he can. “I am…unworthy of her hand. But if her grace wishes to honor me so, how can I say no to such a treasure.” 

He turns to Cersei, and says the words he knows she longs to hear.

“I am, as always, at the mercy of her grace’s pleasure.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

_ He is being so kind _ . Sansa smiles like she is taught, smiles with tight skin like lips stretched over a death’s-head. Yet all she wants to do is cry. He is good,  _ and he might be good to me _ , out of affection for her lady mother.

But to be the wife of a mere small lord…and the Lady of a haunted manse…And worse than that: exactly as he said, at the mercy of Her Grace’s pleasure, a man in Cersei’s pocket. How many nights has she watched the Queen go deep into her cups and call, “Lord Petyr, do entertain us with your sterling wit, for we shall all die of boredom before we die in this war!” And hear her silver laugh as she declares him a wicked creature, and watch the man smile to be so favored, the only one liked half as well as Ser Jaime…

That’s the real nightmare, isn’t it? Marry Lord Baelish, and she is stuck among the Lannisters forever; she will never be free.

Before she can stop herself, Sansa has risen to her feet. “Might Your Grace excuse me? I….just have so many people I must tell, of my good news. So many plans that must be made.”

“Nonsense, my dear.” Cersei rises with her cup. “No doubt you wish to speak to your…” she smiles brilliantly at Petyr, “dashing bridegroom. I will leave you two be, you needn’t make such excuses with me.” She kisses the girl on the cheek and Sansa wonders if the wine will leave a red mark there. “You know I would always see my Little Dove well-nested, now don’t you?”

 

_**Petyr** _

Cersei barely gives him a glance as she glides out of the room, Blount and Trant in her wake. She’s gotten what she wanted. She thinks he is hers. 

Across from him, Sansa Stark sits with her eyes wide, and a wine-red lip print on her cheek. 

She is a girl, the spitting image of her mother, and Petyr feels something in his chest constrict. How many mornings had he sat across from Cat, just like this? The two of them had been the earliest risers, and more often than not, it would just be him and Cat breaking their fast, smiling at each other, playfully kicking each other under the table, feeding each other bits off their forks. 

He pushes the memory down. 

Instead, he focuses his gaze on the girl in front of him. She could be Cat’s twin, save for the lightness of her hair and the pallor of her skin. Cat had never allowed her skin to be so pale, so sallow. But their eyes are precisely the same, and it comforts him. 

_ I will do for her what I wanted to do for her mother _ . 

He wonders, just for a moment, what Cat will think when news reaches her that he has wed her darling daughter. The thought brings a smile to her face. 

“Well, my lady, it seems you have bested me in experience here. I have never been betrothed before. You’ll have to tell me what to do.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

_ Lady Baelish. Lady Baelish.  _ It repeats in her head like a death knell. So loud, at first she doesn’t hear the door close behind the trio, doesn’t notice the Master of Coin staring at her.  _ Lady of Harrenhal, Lady of the Fingers- _

Sansa swallows at last and the tears threaten to overflow. She hears Lord Baelish’s remark, and it does not amuse her. The only reason she doesn’t cry is she’s been so accustomed to holding them back. Her eyes will be bloodshot later, she’ll bolt all doors and press her face into her pillow and  _ scream _ -

“To do-?” He is smiling across from her, and she briefly ponders how many mornings of her life she will sit across from him and watch him smile at her… “My Lord Baelish, you are teasing me.” Sansa’s head dips down.

“I-I’m sure Her Grace will wish to plan most of the particulars, but a bride requires her trousseau…her maiden cloak…if the Queen has not already decided, there is the matter of invitations, feasting, what to serve-” All to be meager, she knows, at least enough to be sure nothing outshines the main event that is coming…Sansa could just choke. “Or perhaps you mean how a-a…a lord and a lady act before they go to the sept?” The songs will not serve Sansa here, she thinks, not at all….

 

_**Petyr** _

She is distressed.

That much is clear to him. She is stuttering on her words in a way he has not heard her done before. Those sea blue eyes are shining oddly– he knows, with unshed tears. 

When she says that he is teasing her, with those downcast eyes, the scar that runs down his chest aches painfully. He could never bear to see Cat sad, and to see this ghost of her in front of him near tears pains him in ways he could not imagine. 

Sansa blathers on about invitations and the fineries of a wedding, and he’s sure she is thinking of Joffrey and the pretty picture they would have made in the Sept. Ned Stark was a fool for ever agreeing to the match, a fool for ever trusting Robert. His own sister had met her death rather than marry the oaf. What on earth had Stark thought to gain by marrying his daughter to his vile heir. And anyone with eyes should have seen that the boy was not Robert’s son.

Nevertheless, he had been highborn and wealthy and handsome and that had been all that ever mattered to the high lords and ladies of Westeros, with the heads filled with song. 

_ She will not have songs sung about her when she weds me _ , Petyr thinks bitterly, but gives the girl as much of a smile as he can muster. 

“You misunderstand me, sweetling. I have seen my share of brides and weddings and ceremonies. I meant the smaller things. It is customary for a man to give his betrothed a gift, yes? It is the least I can do. Tell me, sweetling, what would you have of me? 

 

_**Sansa** _

Normally she would hate to be pitied, but to at least not be teased is such a blessed relief it makes Sansa look up again, breathe just a little more easily. “A gift, y-yes.” She rubs Cersei’s kiss from her cheek and smiles ever so slightly. 

But what can she possibly ask of Lord Littlefinger? Oh gods, such a horrible name…Her stomach churns at the though. The things she wants, he cannot - or would not - give her, and so she wets her lower lip with the tip of her tongue in thought. It must be remembered he is a rich man, that is a blessing… “Most men give jewels, I should suppose. Something for a lady to display her new status and her new House.” Oh, but that she could well do without… “My Lord Petyr, if I am to be sure I do not embarrass you at the sept, I should like to be sure I have appropriate things…The Stark maidencloak is…lost to me.” Sansa’s eyes tighten; the cloak her father wrapped around her mother’s shoulders in Riverrun, the cloak she was to wear on her own wedding day… “I can make another - with grey pearls for the sigil, and all in pure, white silk - that is, if you would not think me too ostentatious…or in poor taste to remind the court what treacherous blood I come from….”

Suddenly, she adds, “Oh! But a bride gives her new husband a gift as well. And I…”  _ I know nothing about you _ . “I should wish to know how to….please you.”

Yes, that is a skill she will need very much if she is to survive this; whatever  _ this  _ may be called.

 

_**Petyr** _

_ I should wish to know how to please you. _

Under the table, Petyr Baelish balls his hand into a fist and wills away the wave of arousal that washed over him at Sansa’s words. It would not do at all to lose his head now. He must present the picture of utmost courteousness, must appear to be as reluctant as she. Must not show, even the slightest bit, that he wants this. 

Because, oh, Petyr Baelish does want this. He wants Catelyn Tully’s maiden daughter to bear his name and his children– though he’s ever particularly wanted children– and he wants her to know it. He wants Ned Stark’s maiden daughter wet and willing in his bed, accepting his cock in her mouth, her cunt, her arse, the way her mother might once might have. 

And here it is, delivered up on a platter by Cersei Lannister, and he must pretend he does not want it, if he is to keep it. 

“You shall have whatever materials you need, Sansa,” he says, casually, shrugging genially. “Write it down. The fabrics, the colors, the jewels. I will have them sent for post haste. Any materials for a gown too. If you are to be my lady wife, I shall have you wanting to nothing.” 

He wonders if she will like that– being able to have any material thing she wants at her finger tips. He wonder what she will ask for, if she will know to ask for the most extravagant things. Briefly, he wonders if she might think him too ostentatious. No doubt the North had been barren and cold, devoid of the finer things in life that Cat had so enjoyed at Riverrun. Absurdly, he finds himself determined that her daughter,  _ his wife _ , he reminds himself, will have them all. 

“As to a gift for me, I require nothing.” Boldly he reaches across the table, bridging the divide between them and taking her hand.

“But I would have you be honest with me always, Sansa. Can you give me that?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Oh, how Sansa had begged her father for such things! “Silk, Father, just one bolt?” “I practiced my bead work with the shells as you asked - might we send for real stones now, please?” “The style in White Harbor now is for feathers, Father. Lady Manderly has two peacock feathers for her hair. I would be happy with only one.”

But Lord Stark was not one for vanities. Wool was more practical for the cold weather of the North; gemstones and jewels were well and good for a lady grown and wed, but Sansa was still his little lass, and could make do with the silver chain granted her for her nameday; he had not deigned to even speak of the feathers…

Sansa perks at his casual extravagance, sitting slightly straighter. She feels her mother’s teachings in the back of her mind, that beauty is a virtue, but thrift far dearer - but does not pay it too much mind. “I shall send my maid to your solar with a list tonight, my lord,” she replies-

And is startled when he leans over the table, and takes her hand.

They’re much nicer hands than she might have thought: elegant, tapered fingers, without callouses or cuts. Oh, there’s a stain of ink by the thumb, but that is all of work that is displayed upon them. They are nothing like the hands of Father, brothers, uncle, household members - heavy, thick, used to the grip of a pommel, not a pen. Rings, too, he has many. The smallest finger catches her attention, gold with a ruby center. It’s as pink as a cherry, and she cannot help but stare for a moment.

What will it be like, thinks Sansa, to have her own hand bound to his? To have her hand held by his as they cross the dance floor at the feast?

To be touched on the wedding night?

That thought she quickly banishes. 

He asks her for her honesty, and Sansa cannot school her blue eyes from widening, at least a little.  _ No _ , she thinks. For how can she? Be honest that she hates Cersei, hates Joffrey even more; hates the Keep and everyone in it and is a traitor through and through; that she prays for Robb to come and save her every night and will still pray up to her wedding day, and every day after.

Be honest that she does not wish to wed Lord Petyr Baelish?

In a voice gone dry, she croaks, “I will try, my lord.”

 

_**Petyr** _

He enjoys the way she perks up at the thought that she might have whatever she wishes, and for a moment he sees a hunger in those blue eyes. 

In time, he thinks, he might be able to turn that into a hunger for other pleasures– gold, power, carnal pleasures. Later tonight, mayhaps, he will imagine those blue eyes blown wide with pleasure, those pink lips parted to say his name like a prayer to the gods. 

He studies her as she studies him, staring down at his hands. What he wouldn’t give to know what she is thinking! Is she imagining his fingers tracing over her skin, as he is? Is she imagining what it will be like to have his hands gripping her thighs, her waist, tangling in her hair? 

His fantasy is abruptly ruptured when she chokes out an  _ I will try _ , in response to his request for honesty. 

This will not do. This will not do at all. He is not Ned Stark. He will not have her run to Cersei the minute she thinks something better will befall her. 

Petyr Baelish deals in lies. He will not have them from his wife. 

He tsks at her, and and strokes his fingers down the skin of her palm, soft and unblemished. 

“You’re already breaking your promise, sweetling. I know this is not a union you wish for, that I am no prince from the songs. But we must be true to each other, yes?” 

He doesn’t wait for her to nod in acquiescence, but instead leans in close, right to her ear, and drops his voice. 

“Else Cersei will control us both and I won’t have that.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa jumps at his finger across her palm. It’s so simple a touch, nothing at all, really; yet it is somehow so intimate, that it makes her shiver involuntarily. A ghost walking over your grave, Old Nan used to say. 

But this isn’t haunted Harrenhal, and this is not from any ghost.

At his modesties, she says, “No, I-” but is quickly quiet again. True to each other - what does that even mean?

She startles again when his chair scrapes against the stone floor, and leans a little away when his breath tickles her ear. If anyone were to be watching, what might they see? Tenderness between the newly betrothed? Nothing treasonous, surely.

Sansa’s lips part and her breath comes shallow, uncertainly. What game is he playing at….? Licking her lips, she manages in a whisper, “What would you have, my lord?”

 

_**Petyr** _

That sweet pink tongue darts out to lick her lips. 

_ Does she know what a siren song she is? _

Her mother had always known. Cat had been purposefully coquettish, purposefully teasing and that had aroused him much when he was young. But Sansa’s obliviousness, her ignorance to how tempting she was… that is much more arousing now. 

“I would have us be  _ friends _ , Lady Sansa,” Petyr tells her, all polite courtesies, just as he knows she likes. He knows she is lonely– she spends all her days cooped up in her rooms to herself, avoiding Joffrey and his mother as much as she can. The girl will want a friend. 

“I would have us talk and get to learn one another, to come to trust each other,” he tells her, and squeezes her hand in his. 

“Lord Renly japed at the tourney that I had not a friend and King’s Landing and he was sorely right. There are not many I trust here, my lady. They are liars all. But I would very much like it if we could come to trust each other.

 

_**Sansa** _

Friends with….a man? 

It’s  _ possible _ , Sansa supposes. Her friends had all been girls growing up, for it had always seemed natural to divide by the sexes. Dressing dolls with Jeyne, or even teas with Margaery. Her maid was the closest she had to friend now, and she was most certainly a woman.

But  _ Arya  _ had never had any issue playing amongst the boys; she seemed almost to prefer it, more comfortable there than at the sewing table with Sansa and Septa Mordane. When they had been mere children, Sansa had always played the princess in need of rescue, and Robb her brave knight; when Arya was old enough, she was not interested in damsel-dom, and instead insisted on being a member of the rescuing party. She spent almost all waking hours with their brothers, bastard Jon in particular, so it seemed possible in  _ theory _ .

But Lord Petyr was not like those men at all….he was so elegant, so genteel, that to befriend him would not require relinquishing her ladylike delicacies at all.

And oh, her heart  _ breaks _ to hear him speak of Lord Renly and the Hand’s Tourney - and how long ago that was! Is it possible? Could he be just as lonesome as she is? Could it be Lord Baelish pretends as well?

Sansa’s heart speeds up with hope.

“I…” At last she smiles, a real smile, one that reaches her eyes. “I should like that very much, my lord.”

When she feels the air between them relax, she adds, “But, to trust one another, I should…I should have to be sure we had the same aims.” She can’t say too much here; the Queen might return at any moment. But surely, to probe just a little might be enough…

 

_**Petyr** _

Sansa’s smile is a lovely thing. It lights up her lovely eyes, and brings a brightness to her cheeks that had been lacking.

He had seen the hesitation in her face. No doubt Ned Stark had taught her the perils of being friends with men, the daft Northman that he was. He wants to tell her how close he and her mother had been, that Cat had trusted him with all her secrets and even her most precious gift. 

But then her face lightens with that smile, and he knows, truly, she is more of Cat than she is of Eddard Stark. 

Petyr wants to cup her face then, to close the distance between them and press his lips to hers. He wants those petal pink lips to part with a sigh, while his tongue pushes in and tastes her, drinking in her whimpers and moans.

But to do that would destroy the tentative peace he’s forged, to close her off to him again. It will come in time, he is sure, but for now he must give her what she wants. 

“Tell me, sweetling,” he says, and uses his thumb to rub soothing circles on the silken skin. “Anything you would have me do, I shall.” 

**

This might not be so terrible; he touches her a good deal, but not at all badly, almost like a lord should touch his lady - with respect and tenderness. She could get used to that - in time. 

“Not here…” Her voice drops to a whisper. “It’s just…” Sansa glances to the door and prays he catches her meaning. “The…the godswoods, or perhaps my rooms, or-” The rooms he agrees to; they ought to be safe enough, surely. She’s whispered some horrible things with Shae within those walls, and no harm has come to her. The woman has promised to protect her, moreover. With a nervous sigh and a nod, Sansa promises - tonight.

* * *

 

Lord Petyr is as good as his word: a dock boy has brought in the third bolt of silk for her tonight alone, this time cloth of silver. Shae watches all from her spot by the door, a dark eyebrow raised. “He certainly seems intent on buying your affections.”

“It isn’t like that,” Sansa replies, eyes downcast and a slight blush upon her cheeks; she wishes the Lysene woman wouldn’t tease her, she’s working studiously on cutting this pattern just so. “Lord Baelish is trying to be kind to me.”

“Oh, I’m sure he is that. So kind, so considerate…what will you owe him when he takes your hand at the sept?”

“Shae-!”

A knock at the door stops her; Sansa’s fingers nervously smooth the pattern, and when her maid doesn’t move, she tilts her chin up in the imperial mien she’s accustomed to. “Well? See who it is.”

 

_**Petyr** _

He has been thinking about this meeting all day. 

Sweet Sansa, with her breathy sighs has invited him to her rooms. He knows she does not understand the significance of the meeting place. He wonders if one of her handmaids will tell her. 

_ When a woman invites a man to her rooms, away from prying eyes, she means to bed him _ . 

He does not expect that Sansa will bed him, does not expect that she will even touch him. He wonders if she will feel flustered, when she sees him amongst her things. He wonders if she will blush, thinking of the night when they will share a bed as man and wife. 

Petyr pushes those thoughts aside as the door opens to reveal her scowling handmaiden, the Imp’s whore. He wonders if she will run to tell Tyrion that Sansa has been entertaining him in her rooms at night– if she would run to tell Tywin or Cersei. It makes no matter, he supposes. He has any number of reasons to be in his betrothed’s room.  

He makes Shae a bow.

“Good evening, my lady. I have come to visit with the Lady Sansa, as requested. I am not interrupting anything important, I hope.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa hears the lord’s voice beyond the door and she debates the best course of action to take: act as if she heard nothing, remain nonchalant in her work on the pattern? But no, that won’t do, either; for the bridegroom to see any part of the gown before she walks down the aisle may bring bad luck, and Sansa needs every bit of luck she can manage.

And she does not want Lord Petyr to think she cares. Perhaps that’s absurd, but there it is.

Instead, she adopts a habit of the Queen Regent, standing before her unlit hearth in elegant repose. Cersei would be drinking from her goblet, but Sansa hasn’t wine…In a panic, she busies herself with a candle at the mantelpiece and tries to look the picture of grace.

At the door, Shae is scowling. “I am no lady,” she says to the first point, and to the second, “Yes, as a matter of fact, you are.” Sansa barely hisses “ _ Shae _ …” at her, and the woman rolls her eyes. “Won’t you come in, Lord Baelish?” She awkwardly walks the small lord into the room and makes a bad curtsey. “Lord Baelish to see you, my lady.”

Sansa smiles regally. “Thank you, Shae,” but falters to see the man again. She’s not sure she’s seen him only by candlelight before, without the reassurance of daylight, and she suddenly feels a nervous colt and not a grand lady. “Good evening, Lord Petyr. I trust you are….well.” It’s all she can manage…

 

_**Petyr** _

The first thing he notices is the tension in Sansa’s shoulders, the worry etched in the frown that struggles at her lips. The second thing he notices is the loathing in her maid’s eyes. The first, he gives a kind smile to. The second, he ignores– for now. 

“I do not know that one can be well after a count a tedious council meeting filled with Pycelle’s coughing,” he says, and presses to fingers to his temple. “I hear the sound echoing in my mind still.”  

He wants to sit, to recapture some of that intimacy from this morning– touching her hand, his lips close to her ear. But he will not do so until she has invited to make himself comfortable. This is  _ her _ domain,  _ her  _ comfort. She wants him here to discuss something she did not want to say in the small hall. 

It would be a clever plan, were it not for the presence of her maid– a Lannister plant, he thinks. He will have to check further on the morrow. For now, he needs to get her alone, to remove the scowling thing from the room. She will feel more comfortable with him then. 

“And you, my lady? I pray your day has been filled with far better amusements than mine.” 

He turns to her maid then, and motions to the empty pitcher and goblets on the small table in the corner of the room. 

“May I ask you to bring some wine for myself and Lady Sansa. I fear I have the beginnings of a terrible headache and will be more pleasant company for you both in the presence of Arbor gold.”  

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa giggles in spite of herself; it’s true what the Queen says, Lord Petyr  _ is  _ amusing. She can hear the Grand Maester’s coughing already. She keeps her eyes downcast in a demure expression at his question, replying, “I have had much to do, there is much to….arrange.” Sansa bites the inside of her cheek and tries to keep the nervousness in her stomach down…

Shae doesn’t leave at the lord’s first request, look first going to her lady; Sansa knows from experience the handmaid is unusually protective and loathe to leave her alone. “It’s alright, Shae.” She smiles at her. “Lord Petyr and I have much to discuss.” And it is remiss of her not to have wine for the Master of Coin anyway, though she still drinks little out of habit…Would Lord Petyr think that childish of her?

Shae does leave, but only with noted reluctance, dark eyes on Lord Petyr until the lintel hides him from view. Sansa makes herself comfortable in her usual chair. “Please, my lord, do sit. I fear we will have little time for such intimacies if the Queen will make the marriage as quick as she threa-” Ah, not that word! Sansa smiles brilliantly, as if to show all her teeth. “As she seemed to indicate.”

When she can hear no tread upon the floor, no squeaking of doors, Sansa’s fingers twist into her gown and she keeps her eyes on her lap. “You had wanted to know my aims…I should like first to ask - when will we depart for Harrenhal?”

 

_**Petyr** _

Sansa’s giggle is sweet– high and delicate and ladylike. She is the picture of prim and proper courtesy, a lady in every respect. 

_ It will be nice to strip that away _ , Petyr thinks hungrily, but he is sure not to show it on his face. He smiles at her genially instead, keeping that smile in place as she sends her maid for the wine. Keeps that smile in place even as the wretched woman glares at him until she is out of sight. 

Sansa invites him to sit, and he does, relaxing back into seat she has offered. If he wants her comfortable, he must be doubly so. He leans back and idly trails the  fingers of his right hand up and down the arm of the chair.  _ Bored _ , he thinks.  _ Calm _ . 

But he almost sits up straight when the word  _ threat _ almost escapes her lips. She is not as naive as she pretends then, his sweet Sansa. She must know then, that as long as she is unmarried, she is a threat– a ripe peach, waiting to be plucked and devoured, with Winterfell and the North, and Robb Stark’s army at its center. 

But he leaves the smile in place, as if he has not heard the slip. It would be no use to lie to her, no use to placate her. She will just think him a tool of the Lannisters. It is important that she seems him quite separately from them. 

But when she asks about Harrenhal, he cannot help but sit forward. The spark of brilliance he had seen before seems to dissipate before his eyes. 

_ This will not do _ , Petyr thinks, wondering how the girl could even have gotten the fantasy into her head. Part of him wants to be sharp. He wants to tell her that the Lannisters are no so stupid as to let her venture anywhere near the Riverlands, where her brother’s army could whisk her off. He wants to tell her that  _ he _ is not so stupid to think that Robb Stark won’t behead him for marrying and defiling his maiden sister. He wants to remind her that should the Lannister army fall, he has no lands at all. 

Instead, he leans forward and takes her hand in his, and brushes a kiss to the back of it. 

“I’m afraid, my lady, that the Riverlands are too unsafe for travel for a highborn lady such as yourself. Our departure to my lands will have to wait until Lord Tywin’s army is successful.  _ If _ Lord Tywin’s army is successful.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa looks up at the lord when he kisses her hand, almost startled. He treats her so well, not like Joffrey, or Ser Meryn… She is half relieved and half dejected at the news. No Harrenhal means no haunted castle; so broken crenellations, ruinous to heat; no awful, burnt and barren wilderness.

But no Harrenhal means… “We are to….remain in King’s Landing, then?” That might have once brought her great pleasure, but if that means remaining near Cersei, near Joffrey, near all their tortures and taunts…she’s not sure she can stand it. 

“My lord, I…” She cannot look at him and feels tears brimming in her eyes despite herself; it’s not that she’s so upset. It’s just that she feels too much at once and cannot contain herself any longer. “I told you if we were to have trust between us, I must know we have similar aims. I…I beg of you, on any love you bore my lady mother, or bear her still - promise me you will keep our words within this room alone.”

She isn’t pretty when she cries, she knows: blue eyes all rimmed red, nose puffy, breath stuttered, but Sansa is truly desperate. Baelish is her only means of escape if he is to be her husband. If he betrays her, she may as well have thrown herself from the tower window after her father’s execution after all. Slipping from her chair, she is on her knees before him, right hand still in his from being kissed, left upon his knee. “ _ Please _ , my lord.”

 

_**Petyr** _

Sansa is  _ terrified.  _ He sees it in her eyes. She is lovely like this, he thinks absently. So forlorn and sorrowful, like a maid in the songs. 

_ And I am her brave knight,  _ the thought almost makes him chuckle. 

It is easy enough to acquiesce to her need for secrecy. From now on Sansa’s secrets are tied to his, and he is not such a fool to ever reveal his. 

But with the girl kneeling between his legs, he shifts his posture, or else he  _ will _ reveal a secret– how much he desires her. 

He wonders what her reaction would be if he parted the gold and plum brocaded tunic he wore and pulled his cock from his breeches. What would she say if he cupped her cheek and titled her head forward and asked her to seal their promises with a kiss, before pressing the head of his prick to her lips. 

He shakes the image from his mind, and instead takes her hands in his, and pulls her up so that she is standing over him. 

_ Give her power now _ , he thinks.  _ Take it later. _

“My lady,” he says, and bows so that is forehead is touching her fingers where they are clasped with his. “I am your man. All our words shall remain hidden, safe, as you will be with me.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

She swallows hard as Lord Baelish guides her back to her feet; it’s a terrible risk to take, but what other choice is there? She must depend upon someone, or die from the strain and loneliness. 

Biting her lip, Sansa begins: “I…I hate it here.” She feels her body tense as she says it, suddenly vulnerable. “I hate it. I do not love the King, and I hate his mother. I-I wanted him to die in the Blackwater, and see Lord Stannis burn the Queen. I-I-I know it’s treason to say it, to even think it, I-” She can’t help it. The girl begins to cry; great, ugly sobs that stop her breath. “Forgive me, Lord Baelish, I have the traitor’s blood. I have not seen my mother or my brothers since I left Winterfell. Father is dead and Arya gone, Bran and Rickon murdered - Robb and my mother are all I have left in the world, and I fear I m-m-may never see them again!”

She can speak no more. She frees one hand from his grip and covers her face in a vain attempt to stop the tears, but of course it’s no good. She crumples forward, so that her head rests upon the man’s shoulder and her tears will surely stain his doublet - and Sansa cries, and cries, and cries. 

Absently, she thinks,  _ I am such a fool - what will he think of me? If he forgives the treacherous thoughts, then he will still think I am nothing more but a child, no woman grown… _

But the poor thing can’t help it, and her free arm clings to Lord Petyr and she trembles fit to break apart. 

 

_**Petyr** _

He guides her into his lap, and lets her curl up there, her head on his shoulder, her hands clinging to his surcoat. He strokes her hair and down her back, a soothing gesture– on a father or a lover might make. 

He wonders if he is to be both for Sansa Stark. 

She has spilled her heart to him, this little Cat, the way her mother once had. Fears about Brandon and the North. And here is her daughter, curled in his arms, telling him her deepest darkest secrets. 

He tilts her chin up, and kisses her forehead, her nose, both of her cheeks. And then finally, softly, quickly, her lips. 

“There are few who love the King and his mother,” he whispers into her ear. Not  _ his _ secrets, but the secrets of others. “But they fear Lord Tywin and his beasts, Lorch and the Mountain.” 

He cups her face, and brushes tears away with his thumbs, pulling her more securely into his lap, resisting the urge to press his hips up against her backside. 

“Do you understand, my sweet Sansa, why we cannot leave here, not yet, with them on the lose?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

It feels like it has been so long since she has been really, truly soothed.

Shae tries, a little. She brushes her hair and washes her feet, massages perfumed oil into the soles, but her ministrations aren’t exactly tender. Lord Petyr’s touches are almost like being home again; a long, even stroke down the back, over her long, red hair, by his smooth and elegant hand. His rings catch a few strands here and there, but he always untangles his fingers again without hurting her. It’s….it’s nice.

_ He smells pleasantly as well. _

Sansa gasps a little in her throat when he suddenly kisses her; it’s not quite the same as the Hound during the Battle of the Blackwater. It’s almost chaste, and she thinks,  _ He does see me as a child, then; my mother’s child.  _ Lord Petyr’s mouth is soft, unscarred, without chapped lips. This close, she can smell mint on his breath. Sansa swallows and tries to put her many, varied thoughts away. 

She only succeeds by asking in a soft whisper, “What about you? Do you love them?” And then, “…Do you fear Lord Tywin?”

Lord Baelish resettles her, and she holds her balance with her hands at his shoulders, squeaking very slightly as he does. All the same, it’s warm, quite almost comfortable on his lap…To be touched kindly for the first time in a very long time is a deep pleasure. “I…I suppose I do,” she says, gaze dropping with a touch of disappointment. Her blue eyes fix on his mockingbird pin, and she says, “Is there nowhere we can go? Nothing we can do?”

And then, suddenly, she touches the pin and asks, “Do you always wear this?”

 

_**Petyr** _

He feels her relax in his arms, settling in. She seems more comfortable now, and even allows her head to lean in closer. She is starved for affection, his sweet Sansa is, and when she brings her hands up to touch his mockingbird, he takes her fingers and kisses them, and chances another kiss to her lips. 

“Only a fool would love the Lannisters,” he tells her softly, head inclined so close to hers that he can feel her warm breath on his face. “And only a fool would not fear Tywin Lannister.” 

He looks right into her eyes, and strokes over her fine cheekbone with his thumb. 

“I am no fool, my lady. But perhaps… perhaps after we are wed I will be permitted to take you somewhere outside of Westeros. To Braavos maybe. Would you like that, sweetling?” 

He smiles at her then, trying to coax another out of her. “And after we are wed, I will give you your own mockingbird to wear.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa gives another little gasp at the second kiss; two kisses in as many moments seems a great many to a maid who has been so untouched, even to have been now twice betrothed. 

_ If not the Lannisters, then whom does Lord Baelish love? _

Stammering over her breath, she says, “Y-you are making very bold, my lord…”

Braavos? She had not considered something so far away as that. An adventure Arya would have loved for certain; Sansa is less sure for herself, however. “I…I suppose so. I do not know what it is like.”

The thought makes Sansa slightly nervous again; she will no longer be a Stark. They are making a Mockingbird out of her. “I-”

Shae has excellent timing, striding loudly through the door, which bangs upon its hinges. “I have brought your Arbor Gold, my lord, now, the lady Sansa needs her-” She stops abruptly at this rather scandalous position of the two newly betrothed. A dark eyebrow raises and all she says at first is “ _ Well _ .” 

 

_**Petyr** _

He’d forgotten about the Imp’s whore.  _ Damn _ . 

He does not show it though. Does not stand and push the girl from his lap like some blundering fool would do. Instead, he wraps a more protective arm around her. 

Sweet Sansa wants a gallant knight? He can pretend, for tonight. 

“The Lady Sansa is most upset,” he says, by way of explanation. “She worries for her brother and mother, and for our King and his mother. This is a terrible ordeal for her, as I’m sure you have heard her confess countless times.” 

He strokes his hand over Sansa’s hair, and presses her head to his shoulder.

“I did not think it courteous to have her sob on her own in her chair, with no wine or maid to comfort her.”

He smiles at Shae. 

 

_**Sansa** _

The Lysene woman scoffs, round hip cocked to one side, where the bottle also rests to grow warm. “Oh, I can just imagine.”

Sansa is stiff, but sniffles all the same, “Shae, please.”

With an emphatic roll of the eyes, her maid pours two glasses and makes a bad curtsey. “Lady Sansa needs her rest,  _ my lord _ . She should be abed before the sept bell tolls. I will come to fetch her.” She fixes her dark eyes on the lord, because she is not afraid of him.

But she is also bright enough to retire to the other room, to ready her lady’s evening shift, and Sansa is left in the arms of her betrothed, suddenly very blushing and self-conscious. 

Clearing her throat, she says, “I-I’m alright now, Lord Baelish…truly.” Her blush intensifying, she murmurs, “Thank you…For being so understanding.”

 

_**Petyr** _

Cursing the maid, Petyr lets Sansa slip from his lap. 

It is no matter though. He has her more than he had before. She trusts him now, or is beginning to, at least. It will do for now. He makes a mental note to find a way to dismiss the whore after they are wed. Sansa’s handmaidens must not be Lannister creatures then. 

He stands, and walks to the wine and picks up his cup, handing the other to Sansa. 

“To our friendship, my lady,” he says, raising his glass and giving her his best smile. “To our friendship and our trust in one another.”

He drinks and motions for her to do the same. The Arbor gold is warm on his tongue, but he drinks it down the same. 

“I will never betray you, my lady. I only ask the same of you.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa watches Lord Petyr drink, and hesitantly brings the cup to her own lips. “ _ I will never betray you _ .” The words warm her gullet more than the alcohol. Is it possible? Within the lion’s den, has she found the one true man; a man who may keep his word, as honor demands? 

The girl nods her assent, and licks the wine from her lips.

The maid returns, and she is not in a cheerful mood. “Goodnight, Lord Baelish,” she declares, instantly going to Sansa’s side. “My lady needs her rest and may see you at another time. Do allow me to show you out.”

“Ah-” Sansa hesitates, the goblet still in her hands. “G-goodnight, my lord.” Shae has bundled the Mockingbird out the door before he can give his own response, and she shuts and locks it savagely. Sansa frowns. “That was not politely done.”

“Are you so easily won over?” Shae turns to her lady’s bed and begins to angrily turn down the sheets. “A few bolts of silk and into his lap you go?”

“You forget yourself-!”

“He is the Queen’s man, through and through; why would he not be? What cause would he have to befriend you - save one.” Shae straightens and wags her finger at the girl. “If you have no qualms about letting him between your legs, play on, I say. But if not-”

“Well I hardly see how it makes a difference!” Sansa is about to throw her cup into the fire….but that is petulant, and she hates to think of the wasted wine…Instead, she drinks and tries to think of some better riposte. “Nothing but the Seven can stop the wedding now!”

It gives Shae pause and slowly comes back to the girl, brushing back her red hair - the same the lord had pet so sweetly so shortly before. “That may be; but if you are not careful, worse things than a marriage and a bedding await you.” With a sigh, the woman says, “I’ve readied your shift, my lady. Let us away you to bed.”


	2. Chapter 2

_**Sansa** _

She could not eat this morning. Shae tempted her with candied dates, but Sansa could barely nibble them and sip her tea. It’s not fear, it’s not the same - it’s a nervousness she hasn’t felt since she stepped before the Queen in Winterfell, dying to be approved.

_ It’s worse than that, I think… _ Then she hoped to be a bride. Now, she is one.

More maids have come to help her with her gown, a splendid piece of workmanship ordered by her betrothed. Silver brocade with a skirt longer than any she has ever set eyes upon. Whorls of silver thread are sewn throughout as well, and more serving girls twist her hair into elaborate loops and braids. One dots perfume at her throat and between her breasts. Another fastens silver bracelets around her tiny wrists.

Shae is threading pearls into her hair, grey and white, with a thin mouth when the Queen enters. 

“Don’t get up, my sweet.” She is smiling, movements loose and relaxed; she’s imbibed already, Sansa thinks. “There’s plenty more to prepare, I see - but a lovely bride you shall be.” She cups the girl’s cheek and Sansa feels herself become paler still. “I remember my wedding day even now, my handsome Robert waiting for me at the Sept.” Cersei smirks and leans upon the girl’s vanity. “No king is waiting there for you, I’m afraid - unless you wish to count him as the King of Brothels.”

Sansa stares straight ahead and dares not even blink. “I am very happy, Your Grace.”

“Of course you are - all girls are upon their wedding. It is only after that they have time to become unhappy, that they realize what their life is now.” She takes a stray lock of auburn hair and twists it between her thumb and forefinger until it curls - and she pulls just enough to make Sansa yelp slightly. “That’s a warning, Little Dove. What is coming for you is far worse. I did try to make you ready, you know. I did try to help you.” Sansa nods, and Cersei tucks her beneath the chin. “Take comfort, sweetling - he’s very rich. That makes up for quite a lot. Many of the ladies of the court will foam to see you in such a gown.”

Cersei laughs and steps away, looking very merry. “I shall have to scold Lord Petyr, you know. I ought to have told him he was not to allow me to be outdone!” 

When she’s gone, her laughter died away, Sansa whispers with a dry mouth, “Shae?”

“Yes, my lady?”

“A cup of wine, please.”

 

_**Petyr** _

He should have expected Cersei to come gloat at him on the morning of the ceremony, but he is surprised when she waltzes into his chambers without so much as a knock. 

“Your Grace,” he inclines his head and uses the honorific to please her. “It is good you’ve entered now. But a moment ago, and you would have seen more than you wished to.” 

He smiles at her benignly, and adjusts the surcoat he wears, in rich navy blue and black, threaded through with silver. “Although perhaps you wished to. It has been many moons since your  _ beloved _ , King Robert died. Even Queens might get desperate for carnal pleasures.” 

Cersei scowls at him, and he sees her hand twitch, as if to slap him. Instead, she curls the hand into a fist. 

“It is good to see a bridegroom jape at his wedding,” Cersei says, and flashes him a feral smile. “Most are too caught up in imagining the bedding. Is your head so clear because you’re worried about how sweet Sansa will take to your  _ little _ finger? Tell me, my lord, do you think you’ll be able to make the wolf howl?” 

He gives her that same placid smile. Cersei is a treasure, truly. She thinks herself ten times more brilliant than she is and the result never fails to amuse him. 

“Not nearly as well as our King Robert made his lion roar, surely,” he says, and enjoys Cersei’s glare. “I will try my best to be a dutiful husband.” 

“Oh, I saw that when I went to visit the little dove this morning. Such a splendor of a gown, Lord Baelish. Has someone told you that riches will make girls love you more?” 

Cersei’s eyes are narrow and he wonders if she is jealous. The gown he commissioned for Sansa  _ was _ ostentatious, but what better way to remind people of his great wealth. 

“It is a lesson I learned from your lord father,” he tells Cersei and then offers his arm. 

“Your Grace, as much pleasure as it would give me to stand in my chambers and speak with you all day, I’m afraid I’ll be late to my own wedding if we do not leave now. Shall I have the honor of escorting her Grace to the Sept.” 

For a moment, he thinks Cersei might turn on her heel and spin away from him, but she takes his arm, her nails sinking in even through the heavy fabric. 

“I expect you to reward me handsomely for this gift I have given you, Lord Baelish,” Cersei says, as they exit his rooms followed by two of the Kingsguard. One is a Kettleback he thinks. His man. He smirks. 

“Shall I commission you a gown as well? Emeralds to match your eyes? Crimson and gold to show how lion you are?” They walk on, leaving the keep and he is surprised by the amount of smallfolk who line the streets. 

Cersei laughs dryly. 

“I have riches of my own, Lord Baelish. But I am poor in Stark secrets. You  _ will _ let me know what the girl and her traitor brother and mother are planning won’t you?”

He smiles genuinely at that. Cersei is so simple. So easy. 

“Her Grace knows that I am her man,” he says, as they prepare to enter the Sept. “I always will be.” 

Cersei Lannister smiles at him, and he enters to wait for his bride. 

 

_**Sansa** _

King Joffrey, the First of His Name - and, gods be good, the last - has no lack of witticisms for his one-time-true-love: “Just imagine the things he’ll teach you, Sansa! Whore’s tricks for a Northern whore!” and “Fear not, my lady - he’s so old, the bedding may just kill him!” and who could forget all the many, many puns on the subject of Fingers, their size, and ability.

Sansa would cry, but she is so far removed from herself - a talent she has primed until it is nearly faultless - that this is more like a waking dream than her true life. She hears the King, but she merely nods to his every word, and thinks of her lady mother.

What was it that she had said? That she had not loved Lord Eddard at first, but his kindness and consideration had won her heart.  _ Perhaps it shall be so with Lord Baelish _ ? But that is hard to conceive of…for Catelyn Tully had married a Stark of Winterfell; Sansa is to be tied to a Baelish of ruined Harrenhal, and the two can hardly be compared. 

A courtier has appeared and is murmuring in a squeaking voice, “Your Grace, it is time.”

“Don’t interrupt me!” the boy king snaps, green eyes vicious. “I’ve forgotten what I was going to say now. Littlefinger and his…his…damn.” He adjusts his crown upon his head and offers his arm to the bride. “It was a good one, too.”

“There is no doubt of that, Your Grace.”

The doors open before them, and Sansa is once again reminded of the splendor of the Sept, its sheer size. She feels swallowed up by it, by the people looking on: imperious Cersei with a poison smile upon her lips. Maid Margaery with her own cheering looks. No faces of home among them, of course, as a bride should wish upon her wedding day. Sansa swallows and tries to keep her head high.

The maidencloak makes the impression she had hoped for, however: the white silk may be heavy upon her shoulders, but the grey wolf in satin shines, with a cluster of pearls for eyes and myrish lace for the bared teeth. The trim is all cloth of silver, and, if nothing else, Sansa is assured that she is as beautiful as she ought to be, on this day of all days.

And there, at the end of the procession, is her bridegroom.  _ He looks taller than before _ . It must be the cut of his cloak, she thinks. It makes him lean, and the color compliments him. Lord Baelish could be considered rather handsome like this.

How she wants to run.

 

_**Petyr** _

Sansa Stark is a sight. 

The gown he commissioned bares the tops of her breasts and hugs her small waist. The pearls and beading and jewels that glimmer in the train make some of the women stare, envy etched into their features. Even Lady Margaery’s smile falls– her own wedding gown is not so grand, he knows. 

Sansa herself is pale– he can see it even from this distance. She looks like she wants to retch or bolt, or some combination of both. Next to her, King Joffrey looks positively gleeful. Petyr knows the boy can think of no bigger humiliation for his once-betrothed than to marry her off to a whoremonger, but Tywin Lannister recognizes the importance of rewarding loyalty, and the Lannister Commander certainly thinks this will make him loyal. 

He smiles at his bride as she nears, does his best to look comforting when Joffrey places her hand in his, and departs giving Sansa a kiss on her cheek– and he sees, a pinch to her side. A reminder for Sansa that she still belongs to him. He forces his eyes not to narrow at the boy, and remembers that greedy men are not often long for this world.

He squeezes her fingers, trying to reassure her, but Sansa does not even look at him. Her gaze is fixed straight ahead, past the High Septon, to the image of the mother etched into the colored glass. 

Is that what she wishes for? Her mother? It occurs to him, absently, that for the first time, he is not wishing for her mother. 

The ceremony seems to fly by. He hears the Septon drone on about love and fidelity and the sanctity of marriage and wonders if he had given this speech when Cersei wed Robert, or if the Septon at Riverrun had when Cat wed Eddard Stark. None of them had remained faithful.

The Septon indicates that it is time to remove Sansa’s maiden cloak and he sees the girl tremble. He undoes the ties with deft fingers and ignores the little sob that escapes her. He sweeps his cloak over her shoulders– a heavy black wool coat, emblazoned with a silver mockingbird, threaded through with cloth of silver and tiny-starlike diamonds. The cloak looks magnificent with her silvery white gown and fiery red hair. Like Sansa Stark had been made to wear it. 

He presses a kiss to her cheek as he fastens it.

“I will keep you safe, Sansa,” he whispers and she does turn to look at him this time, but he is already stepping back into his place. 

He repeats the words he is bid, trying to keep his voice free of any inflection: With this kiss I pledge my love and take you for my lady wife, and hears Sansa whisper hers. 

The Septon smiles at them vacantly and pronounces them one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever. 

The denizens of the Sept have burst into applause, none louder than Cersei Lannister, and she gives him a dazzling smile before he takes Sansa’s hand and turns to face the exit. 

Sansa’s hand is clammy in his own, but it makes no matter now. They are married. 

Petyr Baelish wonders how fast the raven bringing Catelyn Tully Stark the news will fly. 

 

_**Sansa** _

I am his, and he is mine, from this day, to the end of my days.

How long will that be?

The Baelish cloak is heavy on her shoulders, punishingly warm in the stuffy sept. Sansa feels sweat beading under her arms and at the back of her neck - though that could as easily be nerves. Not like the light silk maiden cloak that has been discarded into someone else’s hands, she hasn’t a chance to see where. So much work, and it will never be worn again…

If she bears Lord Petyr daughters (the thought makes her feeling of nausea grow), it is this heavy wool thing that they shall wear as they walk down the aisle. Will they wear it with joy, with honor? Will they speak of their parentage with the pride Sansa has when speaking of hers? How she wishes to cry.

“With this kiss, I pledge my love and take you for my lord husband.” Her voice is far clearer than she might have thought, and it brings some comfort, that once again, she plays the part. Her love…he cannot hope to have it, surely? Her husband’s kiss lingers just a bit longer than the two he stole that night in her rooms; a gentle, dry press of lips. Sansa returns it and doesn’t know why or how.

The applause ring out, as if some beautiful, great event has just occurred. Sansa bears it all with a stoic expression and head held high. It’s all that she can do. However….she notes with just a bit of relish, the King does not look pleased to see his favorite toy walked back out by another’s hand.

“Very pretty, very sweet.” Lady Olenna is picking over her gown with wrinkled hands while a host of musicians play in the corner of the Great Hall and guests file in. “My Margaery shall be absolutely green - but, if you had to give up being Queen, I say you might as well get some fun out of the deal!”

“You mistake me, my lady.” Sansa’s nausea is subsiding, but the color has yet to return to her face. “I would never dream of outshining Lady Margaery, if even I could; Lord Baelish selected the gown.”

“And how like Littlefinger, too!” The old woman smirks and raises her cup. “You do not know it yet, my little dear, but you’ve struck quite a bargain. Happiness and better fortune to you both.”

“I-” Sansa’s brow draws in, what could she mean? But she has no time for questions, for the Queen has intervened and is steering her by the elbows to her spot at the central table, raised on a platform. She once would have relished the attention: how she wishes to hide…

“Sansa, sweetling!” Cersei looks gleeful, like it was her own daughter’s nuptials. “Mustn’t keep everyone waiting, here is your place, and your handsome husband beside you, yes?” She laughs and it is like poison. “Lord Tywin will be at the end of the table, Joffrey and I here…” She smiles bitterly. “Is it not everything you dreamed of, my dearest?”

 

_**Petyr** _

Across the hall, Varys is giving him an unreadable expression. If he were to hazard a guess, he’d say it was half-consternation, half amusement. But Petyr Baelish does not guess at anything, and he pushes Varys from his mind as Cersei’s voice breaks through his reverie. 

“Aren’t you just delighted, Lord Baelish?” She asks loudly, and motions him over to the dais where she is already gripping Sansa’s hand. 

“I was just telling Lady Sansa how this must be near a dream for her– from the gown to the feast to her handsome bridegroom.” 

She means a nightmare, Petyr thinks, but keeps a smile on his face. 

“I am told it is now my duty to ensure her days are full of dreams and her nights full of songs,” he tells Cersei and takes his place next to Sansa. 

“I am sure you will be most dutiful, my lord,” Cersei says, and smiles at them. “And so will she.” 

Sansa looks positively terrified and Joffrey, the shit, uses the opportunity to chime in. 

“I don’t know how dutiful she can be, considering Lord Littlefinger’s… experience.” 

Cersei makes no move to chide the insolent child, and Sansa looks like she is going to wretch again, but he smiles at Joffrey. 

“Perhaps his grace will grant his custom to one of my establishments so that his own wife shan’t be disappointed when it is time. I’ve heard some women say that horse riding is more pleasurable than an inexperienced husband.” 

Joffrey turns an interesting shade of purple, and turns away. Petyr sips his wine and takes Sansa’s hand under the table. 

The gesture is meant to convey that she is safe with him. He doesn’t know if it does. 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa, who was so pale, is suddenly now redder than Lannister crimson. Wedded to a whoremonger, who spars words with the king….He grips her hand under the table and she wants to wrench it away, to scream her anger and heartbreak at the whole world-

But Sansa Stark was always a lady…and Sansa Baelish is a woman grown and wedded, and must - more than ever - keep her courtesies. She smiles, and it does not reach her eyes, and says, “Well, my lord…how does the feast suit you? This may be our only opportunity to speak, I have been told there is to be much dancing before the meal is served, and Ser Garlan has demanded at least three rounds with me.” 

Cersei, of course, chimes in: “Ah, but Sansa, dearest, the first dance belongs to our dear Lord Petyr, surely?”

Sansa’s smile falters, but she recovers. “Of course it does - I should not wish it otherwise.” She has no idea if he even dances… “Do you have a preference, my lord? The chaconne, or the pavane? It would be most selfish of us not to take to the floor, so that others may make merry…”

Merrier, certainly, than she will.

 

_**Petyr** _

She talks of dances, and doesn’t meet his eyes, and he groans inwardly at this setback. Any inroads he’d made those nights previously, when she’d curled into his lap and let herself be kissed– is gone. 

It would not do well to disappoint her though, that would have her retreating further into herself, so he offers her his arm. 

“Undoubtedly the first dance will be to the Rains of Castamere,” he says, and hears Cersei laugh. 

“Lord Baelish that wit will be lost on your wife,” she chides, but her eyes are bright with malice. She whispers something to a serving girl who runs off and at once the music switches to some slow, ballad song, one he only vaguely recognizes there. 

“There now,” Cersei says, and prods Sansa up. “The most romantic ballad for our newlyweds. Let your husband lead you, Sansa.” 

He does as he is bid and takes her to the dancefloor and spins her around, then pulls her close, as the melody of the song dictates. 

“I learned to dance this with your mother,” he tells her, gripping her hands in his. “She and Lysa made sure I knew each one, and bid me practice with them at all hours of the night.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Lord Baelish is….a very capable dancer!

He spins her so her gown flares and a flash of silver lights up the hall. Her hair, in all its intricacies, whirls around her, and despite herself, Sansa let’s out a small, gleeful laugh. Her blue eyes are almost light and bright to hear him speak of her lady mother and aunt. For some reason, it isn’t painful.

She is smiling.

“Th-this is my mother’s favorite,” she hesitates, but cannot stop the smile upon her lips. She is turned under the lord’s arm, and sees the eyes of the room almost all upon them - approving, some even envious! Her stomach grows stronger by the moment. Laughing a little at the next step, Sansa admits, “She taught it to Robb and I both, and he would be my partner on feast nights whether he wished it or not!”

After their turn, other couples take the floor, and Margaery waits for her King to ask her, no doubt. But Joffrey is busy in his cups and his boasts, and Sansa doesn’t even care. Her hands light on her husband’s shoulders, and for the first time in a very long time, she feels at least a little happy. “You are a better partner than Robb, my lord.”

 

_**Petyr** _

His little bride is smiling and laughing, cheeks flushed, eyes brighter than he has seen them. She is a vision like this, and she is his. 

“I have always heard Northmen were not made for revelry,” he confesses, as he twirls her in time to the music again, before pulling her in once more. “But you have the South in you, Sansa. You dance like a dream.” 

He can feel, from the way the hair at his nape prickles, that Cersei is glaring at them. Far from being humiliated, the ladies of the court are beaming at him and Sansa, and he spots a few of the men giving him envious stares. 

Littlefinger the whoremonger with a maiden beauty of a wife. 

Their opinions do not matter though, and when the song ends, and Sansa is in his arms, he cannot resist kissing her for all the court to see. 

He hears whoops and cheers around him, and hears someone, shout Lord Littlefinger can’t wait for the bedding, but he pulls back and gives his bride a smile. 

“Oh, I expect this is the last I’ll see of my bride on the dance floor,” he calls over his shoulder, and makes a bow to Sansa. “I was merely saying goodbye.” 

Some of the women coo at that, and Lancel comes to take his place as Sansa’s dance partner.

He makes a beeline for the table, and his wine, when his path is blocked by Cersei. 

“You’re a clever man, Lord Baelish. I hope that the little dove’s kisses will not have you forgetting your promise to me.”

He looks across the room to where Sansa is dancing with Lancel, looking even lovelier, and smiles at Cersei. 

“What is it you Lannisters say? That you always pay your debts? Have no fear, Your Grace. I pay mine with interest.” 

He offers her his arm and leads her out onto the dance floor, not missing the look Sansa gives him. 

 

_**Sansa** _

t’s true, what he says of the North - her father was not much of a dancer, either, a motivating factor in her mother’s training of the eldest son. Lord Baelish’s compliments have her beaming, a delicate blush of somewhat-false humility across her cheeks. 

She is surprised again by the kiss, at a loss for words - and yet not unpleasant. The lord’s arms around her waist, his lips a soft, tender press against hers…there’s something to be said for it. 

At the mention of the bedding, the blush becomes real, and Sansa suddenly feels alone when the lord steps away from her, offering Lancel Lannister his place. “Oh, but I-” What might she have said? Would so wish another turn with her husband? No chance. Lancel is capable, but without half Lord Petyr’s style. She can only wish this song over quickly so she might partner Ser Garlan as promised, whose gallantry and chivalry she can depend upon. 

Lord Petyr is correct, it might as well have been a goodbye kiss: Sansa is the most popular woman to partner, and might have been so even were she not the bride. She can get barely any rest, and only Ser Loras is kind enough to notice the exhaustion on her face and guide her safely to table and offer her a cup of wine. She drinks more deeply than she ever has and it seems to go straight to her head, between her legs…it is so hot in the hall and she is almost dizzy. 

“Are you well, my lady?” he asks her courteously. “Perhaps you need fresh air. I would be honored to escort you.”

But there is Joffrey once again, as he always must be, massaging his gloved hands together (his dance was the gigue, and he spent the entirety of it pinching Sansa’s arms and telling her how Littlefinger will soon have her on her back and she will moan like any of his whores; he also trod upon her foot, and that could have been purposeful, or his poor skill at dance). “Oh, Lady Sansa needs an escort of a different kind, Tyrell!” His grin is lascivious. “I call for the bedding!”

Ser Loras’ mouth twists into a distasteful grimace, and Sansa feels herself go white as a sheet. So soon? But how much time has gone by? The sun cannot be seen through the high windows, it may have been minutes or it may have been hours for all she knows. She grips the cup with a trembling hand and tries to drink the whole thing down while the murmured threat of the bedding grows into a raucous roar about the hall. 

 

_**Petyr** _

He opens his mouth to tell Joffrey that it is not his place to call for the bedding, and then closes it.

Sansa’s face is a mask of fear, and the grip she has on her wine up does not mask the way her limbs tremble.

This will not do at all, he thinks. And something more protective and possessive rears inside him. She is too young to be pawed at by the drunken men at this feast. Too young to have to deal with Joffrey’s grasping fingers. He wants the bedding to grope his wife.

Petyr Baelish will not allow it.

“My bride is young, Your Grace,” he says, staring not at Joffrey, but at Tywin Lannister. “The bedding would be…unseemly. There would be talk.”

Tywin Lannister narrows his eyes, and somewhere he hears Cersei try to protest and Joffrey yelling, but one look from Lord Tywin Lannister silences them both, even if Joffrey looks murderous.

He does not look at Sansa when he motions to Ser Loras.

“Will you escort my bride to my–our chambers?”

 

_**Sansa** _

Joffrey is pitching a fit; he’s nearly a baby on the floor, steps from thrashing his arms and legs. Sansa can just see Margaery’s face across the floor.  _ You can have the King _ , she thinks to herself. 

Lord Tywin agrees: “The spectacle of a bedding will not be necessary,” and Sansa can hardly believe it, can scarce draw breath. She just catches Lord Petyr’s gaze for a moment before he turns to the Knight of Flowers.

_ He did that for me _ , she thinks. 

Ser Loras gives a delicate bow. “It would be my pleasure.” He offers his arm, and Lady Sansa takes it, rising unsteadily to her feet. “Lord Baelish is correct - you are tired, my lady, it has been a long afternoon for you. Allow me to see you to your chambers.” Sansa agrees, but looks over her shoulder to her husband; if he thinks she  _ is  _ too young, does that mean she is being dismissed as a child would, and he will remain behind to gallivant with the guests? That would be almost more humiliating than the bedding.

Almost.

The only words between them on the long, long walk through the Keep are polite pleasantries, discussions on the dinner and the wine. Sansa’s mind is not on the talk, she can only think that she has not been in this part of the castle since her own father was Hand to a very different King. It’s a little frightening to think of now.

“Here we are, my lady.” Ser Loras opens the door to Lord Petyr’s solar and bids her in to the antechamber. “A most comfortable room. Shall I send for a maid for you? More wine perhaps?”

“You are most kind…yes, thank you.”

He nods to her and bids her a pleasant night (they both flinch at the unintended implications), and then he is gone. Sansa sighs; to think she dreamed of making Ser Loras her brother…what might her life have been then?

But it does no good to dwell on dreams that didn’t come true: Sansa waits for the maid to bring her wine and help undress her, but in the meanwhile, is able to get the first silver ties of the gown undone, and slips off her delicate and most-uncomfortable shoes. 

Ser Loras was right, it is a fine room: a small fire is banked within the hearth, and the chairs before it are plump and sumptuous. Sansa can imagine falling asleep in them, curled with stories of love and bravery. Lord Petyr’s window looks out on part of the godswood, and the view is sweet. It is clean, smells pleasantly of paper and lime, and through a gauzy curtain Sansa can just see the heavy, mahogany poster of the bed…

She hears the door open behind her, and quickly looks down at her hands where they fuss with yet more ties, cheeks flushed and refusing to turn round. “It took you long enough, by the seven! Place the wine on the sideboard and help me with this gown.”

 

_**Petyr** _

A number of responses spring to mind, and it is on the tip of his tongue to say “I did not realize I had married such a demanding wife,” but he swallows it down. His lady will not take kindly to such a remark, the picture of courtesy that she is.

He would love nothing more than the rip the dress from her, to toss it aside and leave her in nothing more than her small clothes. He would pull her into his lap again, and undo those ties one by one, until she was bare before him, writhing on his lap with desire.

But he knows she is not ready for that yet. Oh, she would go along with it because it was expected of her, but those blue eyes would go horribly vacant, and she’d be motionless under him. It would not do.

Instead he says, “I did not bring wine, my lady. There are bottles in my stores.”

He steps close to her back, and takes the ties of her gown in his hands.

“I am more than happy to help though.”

He doesn’t undress her anymore, doesn’t loosen the ties any further. He will wait for her command.

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa gasps, nearly turns around but feels Lord Petyr’s hand at her back and stops herself. “I-I thought-” She is bright red once more. “Ser Loras was sending for a maid, and I believed you may be delayed some time, I would never have spoken to you in such a-” 

It’s no use saying anything; instead, Sansa buries her face in her palms and wishes herself into a puddle on the floor. But her lord husband is waiting, and she must say something…

The gown - oh dear. It remains on because there was no bedding party; but that means he must make off with it…Sansa inhales slowly. “Please, my lord.” Her voice is small. Without another word, Sansa lifts the remainder of her hair from off her neck, that which is not upswept in a complicated arrangement of braids and pins. The skin is white and exposed before him. “If…if you would….”

She wonders if he can hear her heart hammering the way she can.

 

_**Petyr** _

She says the word “please” and it’s all Petyr can do to stop him from ripping the ridiculous gown in a haste to bare her.

He takes a steadying breath, and wonders if she will think him as nervous as she. Calmer now, he undoes each tie one-by-one, letting his fingers graze over each new centimeter of bared skin.

Her skin is lovely and peach pale, dotted by freckles and he traces a pattern of them on her back. He will memorize each pattern, he thinks, continuing to undo ties and hooks, taking more time than is necessary so that he might caress her newly bared shoulders and back.

When the last tie is open, he kneels to help her step out of the gown, allowing his fingers to ghost up her smooth calves.

Sansa is left in just a thin shift, practically sheer, and he can see the ties of her small clothes underneath.

There are just two thin pieces of cloth separating him from Sansa Stark, and he stops himself from ridding her of them.

Instead he moves his hands to her hair, and begins untangling her braids as he has dreamed of doing.

“Is that better, my lady?” He breathes, his mouth close to her ear.

 

_**Sansa** _

Her breath catches every time his fingers touch her; each brush of his hand makes her skin twitch, almost as if it’s painful, and it’s not, really, but it’s so…unexpected.

It isn’t as bad as she thought, so far. 

Sansa finds it a little strange to see a man on his knees for her; knights kneel before ladies in song, begging their favors, though, and this…this doesn’t seem far different. There’s something enjoyable about it and she doesn’t know why.

She does know she’s glad for the fire, though. Being freed of the heavy gown is nice for a moment, but now the evening breeze dries the sweat on her skin and she feels a chill begin to take her. Her nipples begin to harden in the cold and the peaks of her breasts must be visible. Her cheeks are flushed, and it’s a little more than embarrassment. 

Suddenly, Lord Petyr stands up and steps closer to her. Nervous, instinctive, Sansa draws back; but it makes no matter, his fingers entangle within her hair, she can feel the rings on the back of her neck, and very slowly, very gently, he frees her locks from the elaborate style. A whimper leaves Sansa’s throat involuntarily, and her eyes close.

She tries to tell herself it’s because she can’t bear to look, but it’s something so much more than that.

Thick, red locks tumble loose over her shoulders, curled from being so tied all day. Most of the pearls remain in place, so that she looks like some kind of ethereal creature, with drops of starlight in her hair. She opens her eyes and is surprised to find the man so close to her, and when she turns, her breasts nearly press into his doublet. His eyes are dark, the pupils wide, and she has never seen the green so clear before today.

Sansa feels at a loss for words.

Eventually, however, she nods, lips still parted. “Thank you…” But what now? She wants to ask for a robe, but what would be the point of that? This is what is supposed to happen, isn’t it? And he will see far more, all of her, before the night is through. The nerves build up in her stomach again, and Sansa licks her lips and asks, “Might I have a cup of wine then, my lord?”

 

_**Petyr** _

Sansa is pressed up against him, her tongue darting out to lick her lips. He wants to mimic the motion with his own tongue, wants to let his tongue trace the delicate line of freckles that dot her shoulders. His mouth goes dry at the thought.

Her thin shift leaves nothing to the imagination, and he can see where her nipples have hardened and are straining against the fabric. He wants to be able to pretend that she is aroused, with want for him, but he knows it is the cold. He takes another deep breath to steady himself, and smiles at her when she asks for wine.

He wants nothing more than to push her back onto the bed and part those long, coltish legs, and taste her. He wonders if she will moan and thrash and scream under him. He thinks it might take her time to get used to the feeling of a tongue parting her folds and pressing against her clit, but he has no doubt she will scream and beg him for more before long. 

The thought is so all-consuming that it takes a herculean effort to walk away from her to fetch the wine. 

He leaves her standing there, nearly naked, and produces an expensive Dornish sour from his stores. The wine is a deep, dark red, bitter on the tongue. Even being just a little further from her allows his head to clear, and he gets a better grasp on himself. A sip of the wine strengthens his resolve and he pours her cup and brings it to her.

She is nervous, that is plain to see. There is gooseflesh dotting her arms that has nothing to do with arousal, or cold. Sansa Stark is  _ terrified _ . 

“I know you are afraid, sweetling,” he whispers to her, and tucks a strand of her hair gently behind her ear. “But you have no cause to be afraid with me. I would not touch you tonight, but I fear Cersei Lannister has spies posted around our chambers. We must not give her cause to doubt the legitimacy of our union, lest she think of some other punishment for you.” 

He pauses, and motions for her to drink. 

“There are times when a woman might fake pleasure, but I do not expect we will be able to do that convincingly. For this to work, I will need to touch you, Sansa.” 

He puts down his wine cup and places both of his hands on her shoulders. 

“Do I have your permission?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa makes a face when she tastes the wine; there was another reason Father forbade it, too young to appreciate its intricacies, he always said. But - she is a woman grown and wed, and she must not allow such childishness to show, not now. She takes another deep draft and tries to enjoy it. That feeling comes again: the swimming in the head, the pooling heat between her legs…

She cannot help but smile at the lord’s gentleness. He does understand after all; he is not her mother’s friend for nothing. Sansa feels safer than she did before.

But his next comments puzzle her, and her red brow draws in. Lannister spies at the door?  _ If you are not a woman wedded and bedded, she may think of worse husbands, to tie you to her allies.  _ That does make some sense - but what would anyone listen for…? The shuffling of sheets? She drinks at Lord Petyr’s bidding, and tries to mask her face to hide all confusion. 

Fake pleasure….? It’s no use, she doesn’t understand. For that reason, Lord Baelish’s words seem to make sense to her. And he asks permission, his hands heavy on her shoulders. He doesn’t even have to do that, anything that happens tonight is his right. It adds to his sense of goodness. Sansa’s eyes are wide and blue and innocent, she looks to him to guide her. Licking the wine from her lips, she says, “Yes, Lord Baelish.”

 

_**Petyr** _

_ Yes, Lord Baelish _ . 

“Call me Petyr, Sansa. You are my wife and that name is yours to use.” 

He smiles at her, rubs up and down her arms as if to warm her, ignoring the pool of desire burning low in his belly. Already his cock is starting to stiffen in his breeches, but he knows there will be no relief for him tonight.

This is entirely about Sansa.

“I know your Septa will have taught you what goes on between a husband and wife abed, but their tales are usually woefully incomplete. But at the very least, they have it right in that it starts with a kiss.” 

He takes the wine cup from her hand, and places it on the table. Turning back to her, he tangles a hand in her long red hair, and presses his mouth to hers. A longer kiss than the two they shared before, or the one at their wedding. This is slow and leisurely, and when she parts her mouth for breath, he lets his tongue coax her mouth open further. He thinks he hears her gasp, and smiles. 

He takes her hand and leads her to the bed, laying her back. He makes no move to undress himself, though the fire and his arousal has made him unbearably hot. He thinks about telling her to remove her shift, but decides to leave her with it. It adds a sweetness, an innocence that he is excited to despoil. 

Instead, he kisses her again, laying on his side, leaning over her, letting his fingers stroke her hair, her shoulders, and then over one hardened nipple. 

She makes a noise against his mouth, and he circles the nipple lightly with his finger. The little whimpers and sounds coming from her go straight to his cock, but he ignores it. There will be time for that later, when she wants it of him. When she  _ begs _ him for it. 

He repeats the motion with the other nipple, and then drops his hand lower, over her stomach and to the edge of the shift, kissing her all the while. He feels more than hears her suck in a breath as he lifts the edge of the shift up gently, just so that her smallclothes are uncovered. He loosens the top tie and slips his hand in and her thighs clap together. 

He almost laughs against her mouth, but keeps kissing her, his tongue exploring her mouth and his hand still until she relaxes again. Slowly,  _ slowly _ , he slips a finger through the soft hair covering her mound and traces her slit, pleased to feel the moisture there.

_ She wants this _ . 

He repeats the motion, dragging his finger back up, and Sansa’s hips buck up to meet his hand. 

Chuckling, he presses a kiss to her lips, her neck, he thinks about sliding the top of the shift down and taking a nipple into his mouth, but he senses she is not ready for that. Yet. 

He kisses her again and presses his finger more insistently as he traces her slit, letting his index finger part her folds and gathering moisture before circling her clit. 

Sansa’s hips buck again, and he kisses her more insistently, circling her nub, relishing in the noises pouring from her mouth every time they break for air. 

He is close, he can tell, from the noises and the way her legs are shuddering, and he moves from circling her clit down to her entrance. He lets his thumb rub her nub and pushes one finger inside her swiftly, and she comes apart in his hands. 

His cock is aching in his breeches, but he knows better than to seek relief. She will feel indebted to him now. 

Reluctantly, he pulls his hand out from her smallclothes, and resists the urge to lick his fingers clean.

Instead, he presses a soft, almost chaste kiss to her mouth. 

“We should be fine now, sweetling. That should satisfy any lingering ears.” 

 

  _ **Sansa**_

“P-Petyr.” She’s somewhat hesitant. None of this feels real yet. 

He’s right that the Septa’s lessons are not helpful, not in this. She has no idea where to begin, what to do….where to place her hands, even; so that when the lord kisses her, they hang awkwardly between them at first, until she has the courage to press her right palm against his chest. She can feel nothing through the heavy fabric of his doublet, but it is smooth beneath her hand. She gasps when his tongue touches hers, and so quickly does he swallow her breath. His mouth closes over hers and his tongue strokes slowly against her mouth. He tastes of the wine as well.

Something…something is happening. Her legs are going weak. Her left hand has come to his shoulder out of a desperate need for balance. When he parts his mouth from hers, she hears a wet sound, and some tiny noise that comes from within her throat - like a…like a mewling noise…

_ What am I doing? _

He takes her hand from his chest and leads her to the bed. Sansa feels all her limbs go stiff again.  _ I’m not ready-!  _ But Lord Baelish stays dressed, even the heavy doublet, and one thing the Septa  _ did  _ tell her was that her husband’s clothes would need to come off to accomplish this task. Her heart is still pounding, but she has not panicked, not yet.

The kisses continue. Sansa finds herself melting now that she is prone on the bed - deep, forest green coverlets, and it is dark and smells of herbs and musk. The wine is really making her head swim now, and something is happening between her legs, and it’s almost as if Sansa is not herself. That might not be so bad, on this night of all nights…

Lord Petyr’s hand brushes her breast and Sansa jolts, her gasp parting their mouths. He hushes her, eyes dark, and his hand on her sternum presses her gently into the bed again. She might protest now, but his mouth covers hers, and his fingers busy themselves with one pert nipple.

And she begins to  _ moan _ . Sansa startles herself with it, and whimpers again when her husband presses his mouth to the white column of her neck, kisses and sucks there so that she feels her legs falling apart despite herself. Oh gods, Joffrey was right! She brings her right palm to her mouth and bites at the heel when Lord Baelish’s ministrations threaten to undo her again, but the noises escape through the teeth, and her body is shuddering uncontrollably - deliciously. 

His hand moves to her other breast, and when the Master of Coin kisses her, Sansa finds she is kissing him back; she cannot do what he does just yet, play with his tongue as if it were a kind of sparring. But she can receive, and hesitantly touch her tongue to his lower lip, his teeth. She can open herself wider beneath him, and let her head spin as his mouth takes hers deeper, deeper, deeper…

He lifts the hem of her shift, and she feels a rush of cool air against a dampness between her legs. Not just in the usual spot, it has soaked through her smallclothes and leaves a sheen against the tops of her thighs. Suddenly, she feels his hand, and-

On instinct, Sansa draws her legs together, blue eyes shooting open and very wide. Lord Petyr minds not at all, making a sound within his throat that is almost amused…How she wishes he would say something, for she feels so lost - but what is a man to say when he is above his newly-made wife? His fingers entwine in her hair, his kisses are long and languid, and the little red wolf melts again. She feels the fingers over her sex slide down again and she feels too weak to stop him. 

His hand draws down, through her moist slit, then quickly back up - and Sansa gasps, jolting up and grabbing at his arm. She simply has to hold on to something. A little nervously, she peers into the lord’s face, but his looks are dark and intent. This must be the correct course of action, then….For he kisses her again, and her neck, nibbles at her skin as though she were a delicacies to be savored…Yet all the while, his hand does not stop, and Sansa cannot prevent the noises that escape her lips. Her arm now wraps his neck as she desperately tries to anchor herself, while her body moves without instruction. 

Each time her hips move, Lord Baelish kisses her more deeply, more insistently. It almost hurts, but she  _ likes  _ it, and however much she doesn’t want them to, the noises pour from her mouth into his. They sound like prayers. Whatever is building between her legs is too much, it’s almost painful. Sansa wraps both arms around him, digs one set of nails into his doublet and the other into his neck. “I…I can’t…” She doesn’t even know what she’s saying, except her hips move with his hand, and she’s so hot, and oh gods, oh gods, don’t stop, don’t let it stop-

Something heavenly happens-! The part of her mind that can still think believes it to be his finger, what else could it be, and oh, oh, it’s so nice, and- “ _ Ah _ !” Sansa’s hips lift off the bed, seeking more contact, keeping his palm close to her mound. She twitches uncontrollably as a wave of…of  _ something  _ washes over the crown of her head….The hair at the back of her neck is damp with sweat.

Sansa’s head does not clear when he kisses her, only when she hears him speak….it seems almost mundane, compared to what just happened. She struggles to breath, to blink the haze from her eyes, and her gaze searches out his. “It’s….it’s alright?”

 

_**Petyr** _

His little wife is flushed, her skin glowing in the wake of her orgasm. 

Her  _ first _ orgasm, he has given her that. He would smile, were it not for the ache of his cock pressing insistently against his breeches, demanding relief. What he wouldn’t give to take her hand and wrap it around himself. To stroke her hand up and down his shaft until he spilled, hot and hard, all over those slim fingers. 

Instead, he pushes tendrils of her hair from her face, and strokes over her cheeks gently. 

“Yes, sweetling. It’s alright. Sleep now,” he murmurs, seeing the drowsiness seeping into her features. The wine and the orgasm have brought out a tiredness in her, and he wants her to embrace it. 

When she is asleep, he can take himself in hand, stroke himself to completion to the memory of her mewling cries and moans, so much better than anything he could have imagined. 

He hopes she sleeps quickly and deeply, his need to come overwhelming now. 

He strokes her hair, and presses a kiss to her mouth. “You’re safe, sweet Sansa. Sleep.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

_ Everything’s dancing… _

The canopy of the lord’s bed - her bed, now - swims above her eyes, and Sansa’s breath comes in shallow gasps. Petyr still strokes her; his clean hand brushes the hair from her face, and Sansa finds herself melting into the touch. Oh, how she wants it, wants more of what she cannot even understand. 

His kisses her once, and she feels his weight lifting from the bed. “Don’t go…” It’s just a murmur, and Lord Baelish cannot hear her. Her eyes drift closed and Sansa wants to curl around him as she never has before. What has he done to her, what’s even happening… “Please…”

But her skin is warm, and there is a pleasant scent about the room, and she feels sated as she never has before and is safe, safe, safe in Lord Petyr’s bed…

Sansa is a citizen of both the realms of sleep and wakefulness. She must be drunk now, on the wine and on her body…She knows the world around her, but could not change anything about it to save herself. The silk on the pillows is  _ so nice… _

There is a heavy breathing sound that is not from her; she can tell her husband’s presence in the room from the kind of weight it bears, and a shadow casts itself between her place in the bed and the firelight. Lord Baelish leans against the mantle, and breathes heavily, and whispers words his lady wife cannot hear-

Except for “ _ Yes _ .” Breathy, airy, ecstatic, it pricks Sansa’s ears and makes her stomach churn again - not the nervous way, but in the fashion it did when she was being pet, and she bites her lip to stop from wanting something  _ terribly _ , when she doesn’t even know what it is. 

Instead, she determines to lay absolutely still and not interrupt….whatever is happening by the fire. It’s the polite thing to do, naturally.

 

_**Petyr** _

He keeps his back to her, as he clings to the mantle with one arm and strokes himself furiously with his right hand. 

In his mind, visions of red hair and pale skin dance, and moans so sweet echo in his ears. He swipes at the precum gathered at the tip of his prick and lets it moisten his hand further, twisting his wrist at the end of each motion, bringing himself closer to completion. 

In due time, he’ll be able to have Sansa do this for him, and the thought sends another wave of arousal through him, so strong he has to grip the base of his prick to keep from coming. He imagines her studying his hardened cock and the motion of her hands with the same intensity she studied her sewing. It would be the same the first time she took him into her mouth. She’d work to suck him exactly as he liked, wouldn’t she? She’d let him fist his hands in her hair and move her head up and down…

And the first time he’d bury his cock in her cunt, he expects she’ll moan and beg, surprised with just how wanton she can be. 

Her breathy voice whispering  _ Petyr, please  _ fills his mind and he comes with a strangled groan, spilling over his fist and into the fire. 

It is only when he is done, and he has cleaned his hands with water from the jug on the mantle, that Petyr realizes Sansa’s deep, even sleeping breaths are absent. 

She is awake. 

 

_**Sansa** _

She can’t help it - Lord Petyr’s breathing grows heavier, and her curiosity gets the better of her. She peeks. If Sansa Stark was ever in the proximity of trouble, it was from her curiosity. Quick, her father called her, pinching her cheeks. Mother was not so charitable, reminding that a lady minds her own business.

Just barely, Sansa raises her head from the pillow, watches the back of her lord husband. She can tell the doublet is spread open, but not much else. His back moves and spasms with whatever it is he does, and it sounds nearly painful (well…but it might not be, as she now knows). Strangled sounds come from his throat, such as she has never heard before, and suddenly there is a choked sound, and he leans heavily over the fire. It sizzles in the hearth for half a second. Sansa hears him pant, and slowly recover himself, washing his hands with the pitcher above, and the fire sizzles again, but only enough to lessen the blaze. For all she knows, that could be all he was doing, banking the fire so it will burn out as they sleep.

….but she doesn’t think so.

There’s a sudden stiffness in the lord’s demeanor, and Sansa goes still as the dead, eyes shut, trying to make her breathing as even as possible.  _ I heard nothing, I saw nothing, I am good _ \- Arya was always better at this than she was, but still she licks her lips and squeezes her eyes shut and tries with everything in her to be like the sleeping dead. 

 

_**Petyr** _

Petyr makes his way back to the bed. He sheds his surcoat and doublet, leaving himself clad only in breeches and his tunic. Alone, he usually slept without a tunic, letting his fingers run over the ugly, pink, puckered scar that marred his chest. A constant reminder, a lesson. The reason he made each move he did. 

But here, with her– he won’t subject her to it. He is not ready to give her that tale and he does not think her ready to hear it. Plus, he supposes shedding any more clothing will frighten her, and she is already feigning sleep. 

It’s endearing, really, watching her face with her eyes screwed tight shut, her mouth pressed in a firm line. He wonders if she is thinking about earlier, if she is imagining that he will touch her again, that he will make her come with his fingers, that she will be moaning before long. He wonders if she wants it. 

Instead, he slips under the covers and stretches his arms above his head, pulling the blankets over him. He doesn’t touch her. 

He waits for her to come to him. 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa waits, barely breathing, heart pounding in her ears. What is he like to do next?

But Lord Petyr does….nothing. Her ears perked at the sound of the heavy doublet being abandoned, stiffened slightly in readiness - but that is all. She feels the bed sink beside her, hears him slip beneath the sheets….but that is all.

Still, Sansa waits half a moment, wonders if he will touch her again as he did before…A war of thoughts take her with that.  _ Has he made a wanton whore of me already?  _ and  _ It’s only to throw off the Queen, he said so,  _ and  _ Falsehoods do not become a proper lady  _ and  _ Surely on a wedding night, no one can expect any less? _

When it becomes apparent he will not move, Sansa rolls to her other side, feigning sleep - and when her hands touch him, blinks awake as though merely startled. “Oh!” She is probably a bad actress, but she hopes foolishly that Lord Baelish will believe it. “I…I am not accustomed to another beside me. Forgive me, my lord.” She can see his tunic now, a deep, rich blue that compliments his dark hair, and she finds herself admiring it even in the dark.

Sansa pulls the sheet up closer, so that it covers her past the breasts, and in doing so wriggles closer - but not so close she could lay her head upon his arm, his shoulder, his chest. She maintains some dignity, and waits with bright, blue eyes to see what her husband might do.

 

_**Petyr** _

Curled on her side, and looking up at him expectantly, Petyr suppresses the urge to kiss her. He means to keep his promise to himself: he will not touch her again, until she comes to him asking for it. 

But feigning the turn to be closer to him, wriggling over to close the gap between their bodies… isn’t that as good as asking for it? 

“It’s alright, Sansa,” he tells her, when he makes her excuses.  _ No other beside me.  _ He almost snorts. Most highborn girls share a bed with their maids. He does appreciate the act though. And if those sweet innocent eyes want to be closer to him, who is he to deny them?

He wraps his arm around her then, and closes the final gap between them, so that Sansa’s head rests on his chest. His palm is flat against the small of her back, and he can feel the ends of her hair tickling his skin. 

“This is comfier, isn’t it?” He asks, staring down at her, and those eyes and lips are calling to him. Her lips are even parted perfectly, begging to be kissed. Cursing himself for a fool, he inclines his head and kisses her, turning on his side so they are facing and bringing both of his arms around her. 

Despite being spent, in his breeches his cock begins to stir again, and he pulls away reluctantly. 

“I’m sorry, Sansa. That was unkind of me. You must be tired.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

_ Oh… _ Oh, being wed is much nicer than she had thought. Petyr pulls her against his chest, and her body thrums. Her lips are swollen and sore from his kisses, and yet they respond so invitingly for  _ more, more _ …Her mouth opens, her tongue is ready, she sinks beneath him-

But he pulls back, and she blinks, stopping a whimper. “It’s…it’s alright. I don’t mind.” She props herself on an elbow and insists, “I’m quite awake. After such a day, it’s….it’s difficult to sleep, don’t you think?”

Suddenly, Sansa sits up again and forgets how exposed she is to him. “Oh! But your gift, I’ve almost forgotten!” She scrambles from the bed and looks for her trunk, her things. “U-um…do you know where they moved my personal effects?”

Then she suddenly realizes how she looks, her body silhouetted through the shift by the light of the fire, and she shrinks just slightly. “ And….my robe?”

 

_**Petyr** _

His mouth has gone dry again at the sight of her, illuminated by the fire, every inch of her visible through the shift in the firelight.

Petyr thought he had spent himself for the night, but Sansa’s body pressed to his in bed, her sudden shyness when her bareness is revealed… he’s hard all over again. 

In truth, he knows that his servants had her things brought up to his rooms during the wedding feast, but he is loathed to have her cover up. Still, she seemed so excited about his present, that he doesn’t wish to disappoint her. 

“In the corner,” he instructs, “behind the changing screen.” 

Then, a thought occurs to him– the onyx and sapphire mockingbird necklace he’d had crafted for her. He knew plain things would not bring light and joy to her face, and had a jeweler create the little thing with the best gems he could find. The delicate bird, hung on a thin silver-gold chain would nestle right between her breasts.

“Before you go, sweetling, I have something else for you.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa quickly rushes to the screen, her hand on the side - oh thank the gods, her trunks…all her worldly goods, such as they are, safe inside; but Lord Petyr’s words stop her.

…but she decides to hide her body behind the screen and just leave her head visible, hair a wild, red halo in the dimming firelight. “What is it?”

Quickly, she ducks back behind the screen and rummages in the heavy trunk, finding her husband’s own gift, wrapped in silver paper: a notebook, bound in supple leather, with a mockingbird stamped on the cover. She has no idea if it’s suitable to the lord’s figures, but she has always observed him with similar books in hand, and - knowing nothing else about the man - thought it might be well-received.

She has also found her wool robe, a relic of Winterfell. Grey and far too heavy for southron heat, but if it covers her up…She peeks her head back around and waits for her lord husband’s response.

 

_**Petyr** _

“Come here, Sansa,” he calls. All he can see of her is that rich auburn hair, like a river of fire, tumbling down her back. The rest of her is hidden by that infernal changing screen. He has no doubt she has covered the sheerness of her shift with some drab robe, a child’s thing. He will have to work to get her out of it again. 

While she rummages in her things, his thoughts turn to what trinket she has procured for him. 

He cannot imagine Cersei let the girl go strolling through the markets, so she must have sent one of her serving girls. He thinks maybe she’d commission some cloak pin, but then he remembers that such things were not common in the North. A wolfskin cloak would be out as well, though the thought brings a smirk to his face.

Eddard Stark is no doubt rolling over in his grave, cursing him from one of the seven hells. 

“Come back to bed, sweetling,” he calls, imagining Eddard and Brandon screaming in their wroth. “The hour is late. You need your sleep.”

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa rolls her eyes behind the screen as she shrugs on the robe. He really does think me a child after all. “I told you, I’m not tired!” But she does return to the bed, bouncing lightly - and, well, a little like a child might - before sitting back on her legs and offering him the small parcel. 

Waiting with eyes demurely downcast, she adds, “I hope it is alright. I…I have no idea what one gets for a….husband.”

The new Lady Baelish bites at her lower lip and hazards, “My lord, I, um….I am a maid no longer, yes?” She wonders, absently, if he intends to sleep in his tunic - it might be preferable to the alternative. “There is blood upon the sheets?”

With bright blue eyes, she adds, “What did you have for me?”

 

_**Petyr** _

Blood upon the sheets. 

Petyr very nearly lets a laugh escape him, but pulls it back in just in time. He is grateful, not for the first time, that he had learned to school his face so long ago at Riverrun. 

In lieu of responding just yet, he gingerly takes the parcel from her hand and unwraps it. He smiles at the small ledger book, stamped with his sigil. It is a handsome gift, and a thoughtful one. 

There is more of Cat in her than Stark, he decides then. More grace and beauty and charm than there is dullness and a distinct lack of wit. Her earlier question is due to her sheltered Northern upbringing and the daft Septa Eddard Stark had foolishly welcomed into his home. 

He smiles at her then, one of his more genuine ones.

“It is lovely, Sansa. I shall treasure it as I treasure you.” 

He doesn’t wait to see her response to than, and instead reaches into the bedside table and pulls out the small sateen box containing the necklace. 

He hopes she will be distracted enough by the trinket that she forgets her question. He has no desire to hear her ask him to “do his duty.” 

When Sansa Stark comes to him and asks him to bed her, it will be out of want. 

He hands her the small box. 

“For you, my lady.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

He likes it! Sansa had not dared to hope, but she sees him smile - and it is real, and for the first time she thinks that this might be different than the smiles he gives Cersei, and it makes something like hope hammer in her heart (and something else she cannot name), and she smiles genuinely in return. 

“ _ I shall treasure it as I treasure you _ .” A blush colors her cheeks suddenly at that, her lips parted. As he-

But he hands her a beautiful little box, mauve in color, and it is almost pretty enough for her not to even wonder what is inside - almost. Sansa lifts the lid…and gasps. “My lord-” A shimmering black bird, with a sparkling sapphire for the eye - the same color as her own! It is ten times prettier than the amulet given her by Joffrey, on a chain of such thin-spun silver, it is like a spider’s web, almost not present at all. 

“I…I do not know what to say.” But she cannot help but smile, coral lips tugging up of their own accord. She cannot possibly wait for the light of morning to wear it, and turns, lifting her hair off the back of her neck. “Won’t you help me, please?”

Her husband’s fingers brush the back of her neck slowly, almost like a pet, touching the downy red hairs at the nape of her neck, the freckle by the large bone that tops her spine. A shiver runs down Sansa’s back and she suddenly aches between her legs and squeezes her thighs together demurely.

It reminds her that he has not strictly answered her question. Looking over her shoulder, she asks him, “I am a woman bedded….aren’t I, Lord Baelish?”

 

_**Petyr** _

He loves the way her eyes light up at the pendant and the way the little bird nestles in the valley between her breasts. His eyes linger there for a moment, wondering how Sansa would react if he pressed his face there and peppered her skin with kisses. 

Then the persistent thing asks after her state again, and Petyr bites back a groan. He will have to maneuver here, using his gift with words that Cersei so often praised him for. 

“My lady,” he begins tone gentle, like murmuring to a spooked horse. “Did your Septa never teach you what it meant to be bedded?”

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa’s brow draws in. He can be quite condescending, can’t he? “Of course she did,” the lady replies, absently noting that his eyes keep going to the pendant at her chest; he must like it very much. “I know what husbands and wives do. I’ve just never heard of them doing….”

Never heard of them exchanging feverish kisses that end with hands reaching beneath the small clothes and rubbing so insistently, so hotly, so that it builds and builds - and the lord husband’s fingers reaching where he ought to place his-

“….that.” 

Against her will, Sansa’s mind casts back to the cutting words of the Queen, of her son: “ _ Whore’s tricks he’ll teach you, my darling, the kinds of things women do for money in the street.” _

Sansa feels something rising within her gullet. “I…I thought, mayhaps…” She takes a deep breath. “That is how you touch your…your women.”  _ Please, don’t make me say anything else. _

 

_**Petyr** _

Sansa naivety is both entertaining and frustrating. Her downcast eyes, her refusals to say the words, her inability to keep the blush off her face. 

He wonders what her reaction would be if he were to tell her that his women are trained with toys– with beautifully crafted glass phalluses in their mouths, and cunts, and arses. 

He wonders what her reaction would be if he were to tell her he never  _ personally _ touches his women– that he has other women for that, other men. 

He wonders what she would do if he were to push and down and spread her legs and fuck her hard and fast and congratulate her on losing her precious maidenhead. 

Instead, he cups her cheek, remembers what he wants from her. 

“I touch no one, have touched no one, will touch no one, except my wife.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Her lips part. Sansa’s eyes go wide in the darkness. Oh… S-something is happening, between her legs again, the dampness there increasing. She…She could never imagine Lord Petyr saying something like that - something that a knight in a song might say. It’s…it’s so much more romantic than she had prepared herself for. The lady’s breath is catching and she stares deeply into the green-grey eyes - to the lips that had so recently kissed her- “I-I…” 

Oh gods. She wants something, but she doesn’t know what it is, and finds herself sinking back into the bed, still staring up at him, blue eyes wide. “I will be a good wife. I promise. I’ll be good, and obedient, and-” Something is aching between her thighs- “I suppose I am tired after all. Thank you for….” There’s too much to think of, her mind whirls. “For your kindness, my lord.” 

…Quickly, Sansa rolls away onto her left side, away from her lord husband, and beats her pillow more than is strictly necessary. “Sweet dreams betide you.” She curls her legs up to her chest like a little ball, feels her cheeks burn red, and tries to fathom the rest of her life, what happens now. 

It might not even be so awful as she feared.

 

_**Petyr** _

For a moment, he’d seen the raw desire flicker in her eyes, before she closed herself off and turned away. 

He thinks about rolling her back over and kissing her again, but he likes this. He likes that she is fighting with the most primal parts of herself. He likes that she is unsure of what has transpired between them. 

He thinks, in a few moons, that she might be the one to make demands of him–demands that he will swiftly, and surely fulfill. 

The thought lulls him into a sound sleep.

As is his custom, he rises early. He can see the sky just beginning to lighten. Sansa slumbers quietly beside him, still curled into a ball. 

He curls his hand into a fist, rather than brush her hair out of her face, caress her cheek. 

Instead, he slips from the bed and dresses quickly. He will call for a bath in one of his establishments, will spend the day there to give Sansa time to adjust. He wonders how she will feel in the light of day. He wonders if she will ask her handmaidens whether or not she has been properly deflowered. 

The look that would cross the surly face of the Imp’s whore makes him smile. 

He scribbles a quick note to Sansa. 

_ Sansa,  _

_ I’ve had to leave early to take care of some urgent business. I may be hours yet. Spend the day at your leisure, making the chamber to your liking. Anything you need, will be brought to you.  _

_ Petyr.  _

 

_**Sansa** _

She dreams of Winterfell in the summer, that she sits in the long grass with Jeyne and Lady. They are making chains of flowers, and Lady submits to them around her neck, between her large, grey ears. Sansa asks for one as well, woven with honeysuckle, and Jeyne refuses her. “Crowns are for Queens. You are Lady Baelish now.”

That is when she wakes up.

Not all at once. She finds she is warm and so very, very comfortable, and is not entirely aware of where she is at the first. She still tastes wine upon her lips. Slowly, her sense return to her, and she stretches out, larger and larger, until she is sprawled across the bed.

-that is when she truly awakens.  _ Where _ \- Her lord husband is gone. The spot he had taken in the bed is not ruffled, the sheets pulled smooth as if he had never been there at all. Her puzzlement only increases until she finds the note at his bedside table. 

Oh…It’s strange to feel disappointed, though surely Sansa would have felt awkward facing him in the light of day. No, this is just as well, though the first breakfast of a wedded couple is traditional…But no, now she can relax at her leisure, become acquainted with her new surroundings…wash without interruption, and she sorely wishes to run a damp cloth between her legs…

“It isn’t a very sweet note,” she frowns. He only signed it with his name after all. “I suppose that is meant to be intimate…”

Enough analysis. She pulls the bell cord, and is relieved to find Shae at the door after some minutes. She doesn’t look pleased. “There are far more steps to this solar,” she puffs. “Why anyone needs to make a tower so tall is beyond me. Make themselves feel big, I suppose.”

“I wish to take a bath.”

Shae groans again. “And lug all that water up…I’ll get the scullery maids to carry it and will start the brazier…”

Sansa only allows Shae to attend her in her baths anymore. She is the only living soul she trusts. Beyond her acerbic personality there is some kind of care between them, and the woman rubs scented oil into the ends of her hair while Sansa sluices fresh water across her chest. “Well, my lady - and how do you feel to be born a woman this morning? Wedded, bedded, and newly made?”

She wants to dip her face below the water, but that is what children do, and as Shae said, she is a woman now. “It wasn’t so bad. It didn’t even hurt at all.”

“Good. I’d have slipped rot into his food if he’d hurt you.”

“But it wasn’t at all what I thought…” Shae stops her ministrations. “He…he didn’t use…”

“What did he do.”

“Shae-”

“ _ What did he do to you _ .”

“J-Just-” Sansa squeaks. “His…his fingers, that is all.” She tips her head back and dares to peek at her foreign maid, who has a strange look to her tanned face. “That’s not wrong, is it?”

“What?” She glances down at her lady again, and almost laughs. “You mean to say he didn’t take you?”

“I told you, with his hand-”

“Oh gods. Not a woman at all, then.”

“What?” Sansa stands in the copper tub and Shae has to grip her thin arm to keep her from slipping. “You mean it isn’t valid?”

“You highborn girls, for all your reading and fineries, they fill your heads with nothing; did he get you off, then?”

“W-what?”

She rolls her dark eyes. “Make you  _ come _ , my lady.” At Sansa’s blank expression, she huffs, “Did your body shake, did you feel a…a burst,” she points to the thatch of red curls at her legs, dripping with the water. “Here, at your  _ clit _ , my lady.” Red as a rose, Sansa nods. “My - a better lord than I credited him. He was merely giving you pleasure.”

Sansa grips the edge of the tub. “But I  _ have  _ to be bedded, I have to! If the Queen finds out, she’ll-”

“No one will find out.” The maid’s demeanor is serious. “If he hasn’t taken you by the new moon, then we can worry. Not yet. Get back in the water before you catch a chill.”

Like an obedient child - which she must be, not a woman at all - Sansa sinks into the wash water and feels as though a chill will take her at any moment. 


	3. Chapter 3

_**Petyr** _

“Lord Baelish,” Cersei’s voice trills, echoing across the marble floors of the small council room. 

He sighs. An hour of Pycelle’s coughing and mumbling, and Tywin’s glaring and Joffrey’s whining and now this. The gods  _ were _ damnably cruel. 

He affixes a smile to his face before turning. 

“Your Grace,” he says, pleasantly as ever. “I would love to stay and chat, but I’m in a hurry and–” 

Cersei, as ever, waves off his words. 

“In a hurry, yes, back to your little wife, surely?”

Petyr does not dignify her with an answer. Cersei smirks. 

“There is talk, Lord Baelish. Is your wife as cold as the North that you should shun her bed so? Why, my guards in the Keep tell me you have been scarce at home in your chambers for the last fortnight.” 

Petyr sighs, but inwardly is pleased. So it  _ had _ been noticed. The whoremonger did not bed his wife– he wonders what rumors have come up besides Sansa’s purported coldness. As if the daughter of Catelyn Tully could be anything but warm and wet. 

“These are busy times, Your Grace. The King requires much coin to wage his war. I don’t think he’d be pleased if his coffers run dry because his Master of Coin was too busy bedding his wife.” 

Cersei huffs at that. 

“Your little wife mopes about the castle forlornly, looking more miserable than when she was set aside. It won’t do. Remember, Lord Baelish, what it is you owe me.” 

Petyr bites back a smile at that. Sansa? Forlorn? He could almost laugh. Oh, the sweet little thing must have figured out by now that she was still a maiden, must be worried about what  _ or who,  _ he notes, perversely, he could be saving that for. 

He makes a short bow and kisses Cersei’s hand. 

“I haven’t forgotten, Your Grace. Have I ever let you down before?” 

Before Cersei can make an answer he walks swiftly in the direction of his chambers. 

It would appear it was time to pay his wife a visit. 

 

_**Sansa** _

It isn’t terribly gay, being a wedded woman; not at all like the songs made it out to be. 

Margaery insists she’s terribly jealous. Why, who could not be, with maids to braid her hair so beautifully; with such an excellent tailor and all these new gowns; with expensive jewels dripping from her ears, her wrists, her fingers, her throat? At the lady’s garden teas, Maid Margaery will lean close to Sansa and whisper in her ear, giggle that married life must have some other pleasures to it, too? And how, if Sansa were her dear friend and true, she would share far more than she does now.

Her hair, she submits to the pullings and twistings of ladies maids only to fill the day; the clothes, tis true enough, Lord Petyr is abundant in her allowance for that. As for the jewels, she has stopped wearing her mockingbird necklace, for why should she? He has made no mockingbird of her. A mockery, perhaps, but that is not the same.

A scant year ago, Sansa would have thought this the epitome of life: in a tall tower in the capital, nibbling delicacies with a woman as well-bred as the Lady Margaery. But it’s actually become quite boring: they speak of the same knights, the same jewels, the same dresses, the same flowers every day, and what does any of it matter? She’s dragged around by the Queen Regent to be her entertainment, but that is pain, not pleasure. There is no kind company, nothing happens in her life.

And to think Lord Petyr said they might be friends, what a fool she was to believe that song. Long evenings she waits at the table, the tapers burning down, before at last a servant delivers a note saying he will be late and she should not wait to take her supper with him; she left a card beneath the blanket on his side of the bed, to see if he had slept there. The card remained, and the bed had not been disturbed. She could count on one hand the number of times she has seen him since the wedding night, when he promised such sweet things to her…

Mother was alone the first year of her marriage, bore Robb in Riverrun; but her lord father was away in the war. Lord Littlefinger may only be waging war on the purses of King’s Landing.

Sansa is miserable, she is bored, and she is miserably bored.

She didn’t feel like going out today, which is more and more often the case. Instead, she sat by the window and gazed out the shutters; Lord Baelish’s view looks over the city, she can see the white caps of sails at the dock. She sews another handkerchief and Shae spins thread in another corner. “He means to put me aside.”

“Nonsense,” Shae says, holding the thread between her teeth and she wraps it around the whorl. 

“What other explanation is there?”

“You need activity, that is why you keep dwelling on these things.” She reties the wool and spins the spindle once more with a quick twist of her fingers. “What did your mother do?”

“Oh, she was very busy. She had her ladies with her, and she spun and wove and taught Arya and I music and dance. And of course the steward and all the household need speak with her on Winterfell’s economy, and-” Sansa pauses. “She was the lady of the castle…the household accounts were hers…”

“What, numbers? I can’t see you occupied well in such a trade.”

Sansa bristles in her nobility, puffs herself up with head held high. “But it would be my right, as Lady of House Baelish. Is it not so?”

“I have no ide-”

But Sansa is no longer listening - for there is a tread upon the stair, heavy, masculine foot falls approaching the door. With an unconscious gasp, Sansa straightens herself and tries to look both grownup and completely occupied.

 

_**Petyr** _

Shae is there again, as she always is, glare ever present. 

He had not dismissed her when they wed because Sansa seemed fond of her, and, knowing his plans, it would have been cruel to deprive her of her one comfort here in King’s Landing. 

His lady wife is sewing, a haughty expression affixed to her face. He knows a displeased woman when he sees one. But the lines of irritation around Sansa’s shoulders are mixed with something else. Insecurity? Apprehension? 

He doesn’t try to name it. He knows avoiding his wife for a fortnight must have taken a toll on her, but there was naught else for him to do. He swore to himself that he would not touch her again until she begged for it– and he could not hold himself back each night, not when Sansa slept pressed against him as she had the first night. 

He’d taken refuge in his establishments, traveling about King’s Landing, procuring gold for the King, listening to tales of Stannis Baratheon and Robb Stark. 

He has avoided his Stark wife, and as a result she seems ready to hit him, or perhaps lock him away in their chamber. 

He gives her a smile, and bows to her. 

“My lady you are a sight for sore eyes.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

She cannot help but scoff a little; Shae wisely retreats to an antechamber to keep her poisoned tongue in her head. Sansa looks down at the handkerchief in her lap and stabs her needle into the corner. “Lord Baelish, it is difficult to believe you wished ever set your sights upon me again, you have been so long away.”

Setting her sewing to the side, she rises smoothly to a stand, hands folded before her. “Should I give you a tour? You’ve been so absent, and I took the opportunity to re-arrange, it may be an entirely new home to you.” She hopes every word pricks his guilt…

“But no doubt this is merely a stopping point for you to your next call of duty; I have wed a busy, important man, so everyone tells me. Have you seen much of the world? You’ve been gone long enough to travel halfway to Duskendale and back, I think.”

Moving away from the window, Sansa perches on the chaise, just looking at him, daring him to apologize for her neglect. “I believe Lord Rosby sent a bottle of Arbor Gold for our wedding breakfast. Should I have it brought up?”

 

_**Petyr** _

It would be in poor taste to laugh, but it is hard not to. Sansa is in such a  _ state _ . The mild-mannered little thing who asked after her maidenhead as been replaced with a sharp-tongued woman with fire in her hair and eyes. 

His arousal hits him, warming his belly, causing his cock to stiffen in his breeches. He is grateful for the thickness of his doublet and surcoat to hide it, the rich, forest green of it casting even more cover. 

He wants this passionate, fiery thing. He wonders how much longer it will be before she is pressing against him the minute he is home, tongue working against his, while her hands reach into his breeches for his cock. Would she lift her skirts and push his head down and demand him please her with his tongue?

The thoughts make his cock ache in his breeches, but Petyr is a man schooled in controlling himself. He takes a steadying breath, and keeps the placid look affixed to his face.

She is staring at him, a challenge. Does she think he will apologize? He thinks she must have seen Ned Stark falling over himself apologizing to Cat for every misdeed, but Petyr Baelish is certainly not Ned Stark.

It will infuriate her more if he pretends nothing is wrong, and then apologizes later. 

He nods at her. 

“Arbor Gold sounds lovely, Sansa. What dinner from the kitchens shall we send for?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

He just- he-!

Sansa can hardly believe it, not a word he says: about his long absence; the rearrangement of the solar; her constant neglect. “Shae!” The dark head peeks from around one corner. “Wine for my Lord Baelish and I.”

The Lysene woman looks between the pair, skeptical; after all, she knows full well what happened when they were last alone with Arbor Gold. “It is early for a young maiden-”

“The Arbor Gold, Shae. And I understand the kitchen girls are boasting of a suckling pig, is that so?”

“So I have been told.”

“My lord and I shall dine on that, stuffed with apples and figs; another bottle for the meal. And asparagus. And-”

“Yes, my lady.” She’s quick to scurry off before Sansa can punish her husband’s purse even more severely, or viciously prove what a well-bred, fully-adult girl she is. 

With the maid gone, Sansa is bolder still, laying indolently upon the chaise. “It is a rare and wonderful delight to have my own husband here for a meal. It seems worth celebrating, wouldn’t you say?”

 

_**Petyr** _

Stretched out there on the chaise, Sansa looks ripe for the picking. Were it not for Shae’s looming presence, he might stretch out on the chaise beside her and kiss that pout from her mouth.

As it is, it is nearly too much fun to tease her, to inflame her passions even more.

“The meal sounds wonderful, my lady,” he offers politely. And then, because he can, “I’m not usually a fan of suckling pig, but I’m sure this will be sumptuous.”

He sits back into an arm chair, gazed around at his surroundings. She has indeed redecorated— everything seems to be in a new place, save his office which he can just spy from the chair.

He will comment on it later, he thinks, but for now he just gives her an idle smile to watch her hackles rise.

 

_**Sansa** _

She is expected to be angry, to throw a tantrum like a Lannister might - but Sansa was born a lady, and can be nothing else. With a conciliatory frown, with blue eyes wide and wet, she leans forward. “My lord, you must forgive me - for I have seen so little of you, it would be impossible to know what you like, unless it is written in your desk, and I have not dared to pry there.”

She scoots a little forward and…does she dare? Yes. She touches his hand where it rests on the chair’s arm, looking sweet and innocent with eyelashes batting. “Do you blame me for my ignorance when I so yearn to be educated?”

She takes her hand away and re-seats herself at the settees edge. “But perhaps my changes do not please you. Perhaps I do not please you. Should I attempt to guess all that is wrong?” She looks up at him through her red eyelashes. “Or will you remain long enough to tell me?”

 

_**Petyr** _

Oh, she goes right for sympathy now, his little wife. It’s as deft a manipulation as he’s ever done. He’s absurdly proud of her.

“My lady I bid you do whatever you felt was best. I cannot apologize for being a busy man else I will be apologizing for the duration of our marriage.”

He takes her fingers in his, and presses a quick kiss to her palm. Soothing, intimate.

“I promise I find everything, especially you, most pleasing. How else could I feel safe being away? Only knowing I left my life in capable hands.”

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa smiles, and it’s nearly genuine. “I am so glad to hear you say so, my lord.” She smooths her skirts about her knees and scoots a touch closer to him. “Now that I am settled, I thought it best to begin performing my duties as a lady.”

She thinks she sees his dark eyebrow raise a touch, and adds, “The household accounts. It is my responsibility, and I ought to do my share: with you working so hard, any burden I can lift from you I must. Perhaps…” She hesitates. “Perhaps then you will not feel compelled-” _to leave me alone all the time_ “-to be so often away.” 

She raises her chin and thinks how her mother would want her to do this, to take charge bravely. “When may I see them?”

 

_**Petyr** _

He does laugh aloud this time. Surely she can’t be serious. He is Master of Coin—no one will touch his accounts aside himself.

He is sure she is thinking of her mother—mistress of some frozen manse with few sources of income. Sure, Cat might have counted how many bales of hay they had stored, but this…

And hadn’t he heard Ned jape with Robert that the little sister had been better at sums? What in seven hells was Sansa playing at?

Belatedly, he wonders if Shae had put the idea in her mind. Some Lannister trick to sieze control of his funds?

“Sansa,” he says, perhaps sharper than he intended. “You are no lady of some small tincture. My lands and incomes are vast, more than any learned man or maester can handle.”

He takes her hand but it feels limp in his.

“You might have been raised in a place where a woman handles the household but in the south we have castellans, maesters, stewards for that.”

He remembers, suddenly, her little friend Jeyne Poole. Tywin had asked after her recently too. He marvels that Sansa never has.

“Your own mother had a steward, did she not?”

 

_**Sansa** _

His mocking laughter she had not expected. Perhaps not immediate capitulation, but derision-! She would yank her hand away, but that would not help her purpose.

So instead, she sucks in air through her nose and leaves her hand where it is, in her husband’s grasp. “Of course she did. But a lady cares for her home, everyone knows that. My mother is Southron too, or do you forget?”

How to make him understand…have castellans, maesters, stewards - but what would such men know of house sense? “Y-you…” She hesitates and feels absurdly like crying. “You would not have your maester order new linens, would you? Let your steward hire the servants if you must, but a lady knows if the house is run well or ill, she says who stays and who goes. Let the castellan record the stores in the granary, but what woman could call herself a lady who did not see to the running of her house?”

He really must mean to put her aside, then: he will not have her bear his children nor run the household accounts, what other explanation is there?

But she is a Stark woman, and done with tears. Instead, she tilts her chin imperiously. “It is my right. I ought to at least be able to look at them, to know every plate of silver and every book and every bolt of cloth. What am I a lady of, if I know nothing?”

She puffs, her cheeks burning crimson. “A-and do you think I cannot handle some spit of the Fingers and Harrenhal? Winterfell is no shepherd’s hut, my lord, and I am no fool. I want what’s mine.”

 

_**Petyr** _

He swallows down the  _ do you, sweetling _ , that dances across his tongue. He closes eyes and bids the images of him taking her across his knee away. 

She is insolent. She demands what is hers and a million retorts spring to mine. 

_ What was yours was to be Joffrey’s whore and instead you are a maiden untouched and wealthier than he is. _

He doesn’t say it though. He keeps his cool and his head about him. He doesn’t remind her that it is not her place to make demands. He doesn’t remind her that he is her lord husband and  _ she _ must do as he bids. Even if all she owns is some  _ spit _ of the Fingers. 

_ Even if I bid you to lift your skirts and bend over the arm of this chair in front of your precious maid.  _

“If you want to know how much you own, I will tell you. We shall purchase brand new silver plates and bolts of cloth if it contents your heart to count each one and name them.” 

His tone is sharp, but he pauses there an idea coming to his mind. Just as he gives Joffrey and Tywin fake figures, he can do so again here. 

“If you wish to see the figures I will show them to you. Will  _ that _ make you feel better? To see, in writing, that I have the coin I have been displaying?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

She wonders, suddenly, if she has miss-stepped here. “I-” She shrinks a little under his anger; what was she doing? Encouraging him to cast her off? But he said- “I did not ask because I thought you a liar, my lord.” Her pale brow wrinkles. “But if you do play so false with me…it is only in saying you wished my company, for I can little believe it.”

She turns away, red hair flying over one shoulder, and quickly dabs at her eyes with the corner of her long, dripping sleeve. To think she once sat upon his lap and cried, and was kissed, while he spoke of friendship- No wonder the Queen drinks-

Shae has the impeccable timing to enter at this moment, the bottle in her hand, two glasses in the opposite. She notices the tension immediately - the tears of her lady, the hot irritation of the Master of Coin. She sighs and barely keeps from rolling her eyes. What Tyrion would say… “Should the dinner wait, then?” She doesn’t stop from pouring the two their expensive cups, because she knows full well that they will have. She takes enough time to tuck her lady under the chin as she hands her the glass, but that is all there is time to do, for the moment. If the lord does hurt her - that can be dealt with at another time.

Instead, Shae goes back to the door and curtsies, poorly. “I take it you are not to be disturbed, Lord Baelish?” Sansa stares at the opposing wall. 

 

_**Petyr** _

“Leave us,” he commands Shae, the most direct he’s been with her ever. “When dinner arrives knock then, but I would have my chambers empty save for myself and my wife.” 

He waits until Shae’s glare retreats, until her footsteps have faded well away before he takes both of Sansa’s hands in his own. 

He must play carefully here, he knows. He is on a precipice. She is terrified of him leaving her, but a  _ girl _ still. She doesn’t know how to entice him, or entrance him. But she is  _ trying _ , bless her. 

“I would never play you false, my lady,” he says, as sincerely as he can manage, and lifts her hands up to kiss her fingers. 

“I have been sorely busy, fighting the king’s war with gold and soft words. Don’t you think, if I were able, I’d much rather have been at home, by your side?” 

Petyr wonders how much he can push and decides her desperation and her demands must mean he can push more than a little. 

“The beds I’ve kept to have been cold and lonely. What man wouldn’t prefer one filled with his beautiful wife?” 

He leans forward and kisses her then, parting her lips with his tongue as he had done on their wedding night. He even lets one hand move from where they hold hers to cup her cheek and tangle in her hair. 

He pulls back and strokes his thumb over her cheek, marveling at the way her lips have gone full and plump just from a few moments of kissing. 

“Do you truly hate being my wife?”

He releases her then and sits back, and watches the interplay of emotions on her face. 

 

_**Sansa** _

She wants to beg Shae to stay - but is silent, a little frightened as the lord turns her, grasps her, moves her like a doll. “You said we would be friends, you said-” At the mention of beds, Sansa flushes. She wants to look away, but cannot. “I…I don’t know.” _He called me beautiful._

Suddenly, Lord Petyr is kissing her, and not chastely as when he first sat her upon his lap. Sansa should be a lady, but her body betrays her, her soul betrays her, her lonely, affection-starved being. Instantly she melts into the touch. His tongue brushes hers and immediately her mouth is hungry, opening before him and searching for more. His hand brushes her cheek, weaves into her hair, and she leans against it-

But then he is gone again. Sansa is breathless; she might have actually whimpered, even moaned; she’s not sure of anything.

She wants to tell him no, she doesn’t hate it, even if her voice falters. But that isn’t the truest thing she can say, and does: “I don’t know. I have been your wife scarcely six hours in total.”

The Lord Baelish leans back. His lady is lost, wide-eyed, begging for direction; for kindness; and gods, for attention. 

 

_**Petyr** _

Those blue eyes bore into him, and he sees the desire there. She has not vocalized it, not yet, but it would seem that she doesn’t have the words. 

Petyr can only control himself so much. In front of him, Sansa Stark, Cat’s daughter,  _ his wife _ , sits, eyes trained upon him, dark with desire. Her lips are parted, waiting to be kissed.

Who is he to refused that?

He pulls her to him, guides her into his lap as he had done the first time they had been in her rooms. 

“It seems I will have to convince you that it is worth being my wife,” he murmurs, letting his lips graze her jaw. 

His mouth finds hers again and he kisses her with abandon, tangling his hand in her hair, while the other smooths down the pale column of her neck. 

The gown she wears has ties in the front and he toys with the first one, tugging gently to bring her attention to it, but not enough to untie it. 

He is determined– Sansa will bare herself to him tonight. And, he thinks, spying his office, he knows just where she will do so. 

 

_**Sansa** _

She protests not at all; why should she? This is what she wanted - in the sense that she should be made his wife, and in that sense alone.

Lord Petyr pulls her to him, onto his lap - but it’s slightly different, not “side saddle” with skirts smoothed over, but straddled, dress rucked up to just above her knees. Sansa doesn’t care; she’s being held. His chest presses into her own, she can smell a pleasant cologne and mint upon his breath, and she’s needed something like this so terribly, she cares not at all. 

He doesn’t kiss her properly, not at first. His mouth wanders across the ridge of her jaw, which is very silly, down her throat- “Oh…” At that, he brings her mouth to hers again, and she must be whimpering now. What should she do with her hands? His fingers tangle in her hair, and that seems right enough, so her own hands go behind his neck and begin to thread through his short, dark hair. It’s soft, clean….something feels nice about this, her nails along his skin…

He’s teasing her, she realizes, pulling at the laces of her gown. Sansa stiffens slightly, catches him staring up into her face. Is he awaiting her permission? She cannot give it to him, because she cannot give it to herself. Instead, she says, “It is your right.” 

She doesn’t know if she hopes he proceeds or if he leaves the dress on - but if he tries to let her go, she will break apart, and her arms tighten around the lord’s neck.

 

_**Petyr** _

_ It is your right _ . 

How four simple words pull him back to himself, remind him of his aims with the young woman in his lap.

He will not have her thinking of  _ rights _ and  _ duty _ . He will not have her be like her mother– taking to a cold bed in the name of Family, Duty, and Honor. 

Petyr loosens his hold on her, and lets his hands drop to his sides. Her arms remain tight about his neck, but now he is careful not to touch her. 

“You have redecorated most beautifully,” he says, gazing around the room, eyes landing anywhere but her face. 

“Why don’t you show me what you’ve done while we wait for the food?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

“N-now? I…” What did I do wrong now? Well, she’s not getting up. He’ll have to push her off, as she knows he very well wishes to. 

Instead, Sansa rights herself so she no longer straddles the lord’s lap, clearing her throat and pointing to what is new. “That chest is better suited there, with the bureau moved to the corner, because those heavy furs and blankets are needed but rarely here. That opens the room up, do you see? A-and there are new candle stands of silver, with feathers on the stem, and I had the old burnished to suit the room. The chaise is new, and I had them furnish it in green damask, and the settee has been re-stuffed.” 

Sansa looks down at her hands, fiddling in her lap. “Is it to your liking?”

She isn’t sure if she is pleased or not when there is a knock upon the door. Shae looks none too happy to bear the heavy tray of meats, and has enlisted two smudged scullery maids to bring up the roasted potatoes and asparagus in butter. The next bottle of Arbor Gold is born up in a clay vessel filled with water to keep it cool. “Is now suitable, my lord, my lady? Or shall I carry all this back down again?”

With this, Sansa makes to slide off the man’s lap, but has left her hand at his shoulder, waiting to be totally cast off. 

 

_**Petyr** _

For once in his life, Petyr Baelish is grateful to Shae. 

Her timing in bringing the meal is excellent and Sansa slips from his lap before he loses his resolve and tears open the bodice of the infernal gown. 

Sansa is still touching him though, as if he’d suddenly disappear the moment he was no longer tethered to the room by her. It is tempting– to feign some trouble, some forgotten meeting, but he senses that would undo the naked desire he’d seen in her eyes earlier.

“Thank you,” he says, with a perfunctory bow at Shae, which slips Sansa’s hand from his shoulders. “Please, feel free to spend the rest of the evening catering to your own amusements. My wife and I will have other kitchen servants clear this away when we are done.” 

He does not miss the way Shae glances at Sansa before accepting her dismissal and she and the other scullery maids retreat.

“I appreciate the changes, my lady. You have fine taste. Shall we eat? Afterwards I would show you my office. You can make decorating suggestions there.” 

He lifts his cup and takes a long draught of wine, amused by the expression on Sansa’s features. 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa doesn’t miss Shae’s raised eyebrow, the look she gives her - both an inquiry and permission. For why should she not wish to go? But the lady nods, and her maid is gone. Perhaps…perhaps Lord Petyr means to stay tonight, then.

The hem of her dress spins about her ankles, she turns so quickly at his words. “Truly? Do you mean that, your innermost domain?” She can’t understand Baelish at all: he burns so hot, and then so cold. Kisses and tenderness, promises of devotion - and then total, bored disinterest, as though this marriage were a chore to him.

But isn’t it? He wed at the Queen’s command, not by the desires of his heart.

Her mother, that is who he loved. How foolish to think that would mean he’d bear for her an ounce of affection.

Still, Lady Baelish nods, going to the table and her seat. “I should like that very much. And I can only hope the pork is better than you anticipated.” She takes a long, slow draught from her own cup and feels her fingers tremble.

The kitchen has much to be pleased with. On top of stuffing two loins with apples and figs, there is a sauce of pitted cherries, cooked down to syrupy splendor, with crisp, dark skin and moist, white meat. The potatoes have been roasted in fat and butter and glisten; the asparagus swims in butter. Sansa worries she’ll dirty her fingers over much when she delicately nibbles each tender stalk, and is careful to open her mouth wide enough that it does not brush her lips as she feeds it into her mouth, so her lips are not stained with butter. Let him like it, please.

 

_**Petyr** _

Sansa is so proper, so  _ staid _ . His  _ innermost domain _ ,  _ honestly. _ Had Ned Stark hired the most daft Septa he could find? 

He has to hide the smirk that crosses his features, because  _ that _ at least makes sense. 

Sansa is clearly well-bred. He had noticed on the morning of their betrothal the delicate way she nibbled at each bite, careful to chew slowly with her mouth tightly closed. He sees it here again firsthand, so perfect and ladylike in her composure. 

Until she opens her mouth and slides a stalk of asparagus down her throat, and Petyr’s mouth goes dry. 

Hastily, he reaches for his wine and takes a large gulp. The wine has been properly chilled, but it does nothing to cool the burning coil of  _ want _ that has come alive in his stomach. 

He cannot stop the images of Sansa, on her knees, her mouth open just like that, begging for and accepting his cock. 

_ Does she know what she is doing?  _ The thought crosses his mind that the Imp’s whore might be giving her lessons, but he cannot picture innocent little Sansa,  _ It is your right _ Sansa, doing anything of the sort. 

He clears his throat and downs the rest of his wine and pushes his plate away, eager to be done, to take her into his office, to have her back on his lap. But he cannot sit here and watch her eat like that, not if he holds true to his word not to touch her until she begs. 

As it is, he is like to beg her. 

“This was sumptuous. Excellent choice, my lady. I shall be in my office. Just come in when you are done.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

“I-….” He eats like a bird, too. Three mouthfuls at most, one cherry, and he is gone from the table. A sense of doom comes over the girl, when she hears the door shut, she lets her head drop so her chin nearly touches her sternum. How she wishes she could write her mother, beg to know how she won her father’s love.

For won it she did, though it was naught but what Catelyn Tully richly deserved. For even honorable Eddard Stark had taken to the bed of another woman in a time of war; that is simply what men do, she knows, separated from their wives. But Baelish created this separation of his own making. What would her mother do? 

Sansa finishes the asparagus because that is so rare a treat, but pushes the rest away and rings the bell for the scullery maids. They go into fits of thankfulness when she tells them they can finish the meal, and says she’ll want a bottle of Dornish red for the evening. They’ll have to fill their stomachs on something, after all. 

Sansa carefully washes all traces of food from her hands, the butter from beneath her nails; checks in the glass that her hair is suitable; straightens her gown - and knocks delicately at the office door, peaking her little red head round the jamb. “I am here, my lord. Do you still wish me?”

 

_**Petyr** _

Proper as ever, his little wife knocks. He knew she would, even though he bid her just come in. 

It makes no matter, in the time Sansa has taken to finish her meal, he has drafted up faked ledgers for House Baelish, instructions for carrying out orders. 

Household items, names of servants, inventories for his lands in the Fingers, his apartments in King’s Landing,  _ save his businesses, of course _ , and plans for Harrenhal. 

Each ledger totals up to some obscene amount of dragons, especially the plans for Harrenhal. He wonders how her eyes will widen when she sees them. He wonders what she will set about monitoring first– no doubt their apartments here. Will she want to move into another chamber, separate from his? He is sure to list the number of rooms they have been given in a darker ink, just to see what she wishes. 

_ A life in my bed, or a life out of it _ . 

“Come in, sweetling,” he calls, and busies himself reading some report or other, feigning an air of business. 

 

_**Sansa** _

He does not look up as she enters, and that would usually be enough for her to excuse herself and turn away - but desperate times…Sansa clears her throat. “In redecorating an office or library, function is of primacy. Would you…would you please show me what you cannot do without, what you need where?” 

Hesitantly, the young lady tiptoes toward the desk and peers at the long, long ledgers that nearly tumble to the floor. “What is it you labor at tonight, my lord?”

It’s not just the house she doesn’t know, it’s him completely, she realizes. Could she persuade him to talk with her a while? Might he like her more if they trade some small intimacies? There is nowhere to sit, so instead she leans over him , her hand hovering above his shoulder and waiting permission to rest there. “I have only seen my maids here to tend to the household, but you must have other servants for matters of business; who are they, where do you see them? Are they listed here?” And quickly, so it sounds like a natural continuation of the question, “When is your nameday?”

 

_**Petyr** _

“So many questions,” Petyr says, laughing lightly this time. He moves over in his chair and motions for her to sit– half on the arm, half in his lap.

He waits for her to take the seat before continuing, one arm going around her waist to balance her there more securely. 

“My nameday is not long after the new year breaks. The tenth day of that month.” 

He wonders if Sansa believes in all the superstitions about namedays and personalities. He thinks she might. Before she can comment though, he pushes on.

“I need easy access to a desk, obviously,” he says, and motions around him. “Good lighting at all times. Space to write and store papers, ledgers…  _ these _ .” 

He hands her the papers with a flourish. 

“What you asked for.  _ Our–”  _ he says, with inflection, “house ledgers.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

She does not quite understand how his hand pats the edge of the chair at first, at his leg. When she does take his meaning, Sansa perches there most awkwardly, squeaks a little when his arm wraps her to keep her steady. His palm rests warmly at her hip, just above the thigh.

The tenth day of the new year…that is not so far away. She tries to school her face so it does not appear she is thinking as much as she is. 

Good lighting at all times… Sansa looks around the room. “But my lord, is it not…dark as it is now, to you?” The office is full of warm, rich shadows. Many candles, yes, but the room has a quality of the secretive that does not match his words. 

She cannot believe it - the papers. She expected so much more of a fight. Sansa carefully takes them in her hands, a lovely smile lighting her face. It’s near as good as a new necklace or bottle of perfume. “I thank you, Lord Baelish. I swear I will not fail you. Now…” She glances at the desk - emptier than before, but still covered in papers. “You do not intend to work into the night, surely? Even the gods take their rest.”

 

_**Petyr** _

Petyr ignores his longing desire to lift her skirts and stroke the warm skin of her thighs. Instead, he contents himself with smoothing his thumb over the fabric of her gown.

“I suppose I’ve grown used to it,” Petyr muses, looking about the room. It is darker than he’d realized, but he has grown more than accustomed to it. Varys’s little birds cannot see in here. 

“It is important for a man to be able to see his words, but for no other eyes to see, or ears to hear, do you understand, Sansa?” The shadowed corners comfort him, and in the shadows, on his lap, Sansa seems every inch the doting wife. He hopes she will understand his meaning, and he gives her side a little squeeze to emphasize his point. 

Her face does light up, that he can see, even in the shadows, at the ledgers. He is amused by her enthusiasm– he had not seen that since he gave her the necklace– which he notices she is no longer wearing. He frowns at that, but covers it quickly. 

“I have no doubt you will be most capable, Sansa. I apologize for my earlier reticence– you must understand that these long years I’ve had no one in King’s Landing capable of my trust, yes? That I have built all these myself?” 

To show his faith in her, and indulge himself, he presses a kiss to her temple, but allows himself to trace down her chest, over the swell of her breast, to where the mockingbird pendant should hang. 

“But what would my wife have me do, if not work? I see she no longer wears the jewels I have procured for her…should I be working late into the evening to find finer gemstones?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

“But you wanted trust between us, my lord, don’t you remember? I…” She suddenly understands the shadows of the room - and somehow, also, she is not afraid anymore because of them. She sinks off the arm of the chair, and as he touches her, she dares touch him. Sansa turns, and steadies herself by holding the lord’s shoulders. In a low voice, she murmurs, “I gave you many secrets from my breast, in trust. Now it is your turn - to trust your wife. Though I appreciate that is not easy to start with…” 

She doesn’t gasp when his fingers move down her sternum, just between the tops of her breasts. She breathes in a way that is heavy, that has been preparing for this moment for a long, long time. “Would you wish I wear it every day? I did not want it to tarnish. And…” Sansa bites her lower lip. “It was a cruel reminder, a false mockingbird, while…while the true one had flown from the nest.” 

Almost a little angry, she shoves his papers to the side, not caring when some fall to the floor in a flutter and some crease. “Enough working in the King’s service for one night, Seven bless his name. I-I have rights, too. I…” She is turned in his lap so she is half sitting on him, and half on the desk. “I do not want jewels alone…I do not clutch sapphires in my bed at night, Lord Baelish.” 

 

_**Petyr** _

He did not expect her to move so boldly, to throw papers from his desk in her haste for him, but Petyr  _ delights  _ in it.

What he wouldn’t give to push her back on the desk, push her skirts up and small clothes aside, and fuck her with abandon. She’d be dripping wet for him, cunt clenching around him, begging for every inch, moaning his name until it echoed from each shadow in the room. 

One day, he would have just that. But not yet– no, little Sansa would be  _ horrified _ at that, after the fact. To be taken so roguishly on a desk? Not even on a bed? She’d never look him in the eye again, least of all straddle his lap and demand her rights.  

No, for today, he satisfies himself by brushing little kisses on her cheeks, her nose, softly against her lips. 

“Would my wife have me kiss her here?” He asks, pressing kisses to the corners of her mouth and takes Sansa’s intake of breath as acquiescence. 

“Here?” He echoes, pressing his lips to her earlobe, her jaw, down her neck, while Sansa gives breathy mewls and sighs, the sounds going straight to his cock. 

He stops, lips just barely brushing the tops of her breasts where they are bared by her gown. 

“What else would my wife have of me?” 

He waits, with bated breath, to see what she will name. 

 

_**Sansa** _

It is so nice to be touched, and Lord Petyr does it so sweetly…so much better than anything Joffrey ever threatened her with. His beard tickles her skin, but there is something pleasant in that. 

Her husband’s hands are on her hips as he devours her neck, and sounds escape her but she cannot care. Things that don’t make sense, little whimpers and ohs, and a small, gasped, “Yes…“ 

She blinks awake when he kneels before her, his head about level with her knees. What else would she have of him? “I don’t know…” But she strikes upon a brilliant idea, and with only a second of hesitation, threads her fingers through the grey at his temple. “I trust you. Guide me.” 

There is a terribly slick feeling between her legs, and an ache. She wants to be taught, with hands and tongues, fingers and words. She is not just innocent, she is ignorant, and she wants to learn. Her voice is dry when she says, “Tell me what is right to do, my lord - please.” 

 

_**Petyr** _

_ Please _ . 

She says the word he has been looking for, and Petyr immediately knows what he wants to do. 

Kneeling between her legs, he pushes up her skirts slowly, pressing the same soft kisses to her legs, calves, the ticklish spots behind her knees. 

Above him, Sansa squirms, but he keeps his pace slow. For every new inch of skin he bares, he spreads her legs just a little further, until the skirt of her gown is tucked up around her waist, and she is nearly fully bare for him, long legs spread obscenely across his desk. 

His mouth waters and in his breeches, his cock aches. 

He sees the tell-tale wet spot blossoming through the light cotton of her small clothes, but he ignores it for now. He busies himself with placing slow,  _ bruising _ kisses up and down her thighs, relishing each mark he leaves. 

_ Mine _ . 

Sansa is making whining noises, poor thing not even sure what she is looking for. 

He undoes the ties of her small clothes then and casts them aside, flinging them somewhere in the dark room. He can’t be bothered to care. 

It is so much better than their wedding night because he can  _ see her _ . He can see the pink of her slit, glistening with moisture, begging to be touched, licked,  _ fucked _ . 

He closes his eyes and wills away the desire to wrench his breeches open and shove his hardened cock into her. He will have it,  _ soon _ , he knows, but the desire for her now, like this, spread out, near dripping wet, is overwhelming. 

Instead, he slides his tongue right into her and lets her gasps and noises guide him. 

He thrusts with his tongue, before licking upwards and lapping at her clit. There is no mistaking the way Sansa’s hands tighten in his hair. She wants him  _ there.  _ He obliges her, licking furiously, sucking on the little nub until Sansa is moaning, hands pulling on his hair, more wetness leaking out of her. 

He doesn’t stop there. 

He slips his tongue back down, trusting in and out of her again, imagining replacing it with his cock. He pulls back to look at her. 

Her head is thrown back, still coming down from the first orgasm, and a lovely flush has spread over her face and neck. He curses the fact that he didn’t remove the top of her gown. He’d have liked to see that flush extend to her breasts, nipples begging for his kiss.  _ Next time _ .  

He returns his attention to her clit, sealing his mouth over it and sucking. He slips a finger inside her, and then adds another, pumping them in and out of Sansa furiously. 

She comes quickly after that, and he thinks to release her then, but he wants her shaking with pleasure, unable to move or speak. He keeps his mouth sealed over her clit, alternating sucking with flicks of his tongue, his fingers still moving at a steady pace. Sansa’s wetness seeps into his beard and down his hand, and he focuses on that instead of the insistent ache in his cock that tells him to  _ fuck _ his plans and properly  _ fuck _ his wife. 

Sansa’s legs are shaking again, and this time, after he has stroked her through the aftershocks and licked her clean, he does pull back, grateful as ever for the dark color and heavy fabric of his surcoat. 

He stands, stroking her thighs, stroking over the marks he made with one hand while he wipes his face with his handkerchief with the other. 

“Was that  _ right _ , sweetling?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t instruct her at all, which is curious. But instead, Sansa takes this as the cue not to protest, to let him guide the dance.

This time it’s going to happen, she will be a maid no longer. He has lifted her skirts, so what else can it be? And he kisses slowly and surely, tickles her knees so she can’t repress a giggle - and it’s…enjoyable. Her legs almost ache to be spread so far, but it’s so good…

She thinks at first he’ll touch her like he did before, and she could beg for that; she  _ needs  _ to have that pressure now, as if she would die without it- and he pulls off her smallclothes, so he must-

Sansa gasps, jolts straight up and sees her lords head between her thighs. But how can he kiss her there, of all places? Suddenly, it doesn’t matter; Sansa’s body is becoming liquid, and she moves as it bids her. His tongue plunges her depths, and she can’t keep from crying out. “Oh, Lord Petyr, Lord Petyr, please, my lord! ” He sucks at… what did Shae call it? Her clit? It’s amazing. Higher, higher, her hips raise up to meet his mouth - a beautiful, bright feeling engulfs her and her legs shake and she is limp upon the desk. But her husband hasn’t stopped - now his fingers are inside her, and it’s even better! A foreign thought takes her mind: “I’m ready. ” she’s never thought this before, doesn’t entirely know what it means, except that she will be ready for whatever happens, wants it desperately. Sansa writhes and let’s the lord do whatever terrible, wonderful thing he wants. Her hips buck, she makes insensible noises, grips him tight enough to hurt- He has finished her so many times now… he pulls away and there is a terrible, wet sound when his fingers leave her. Sansa is limp, and unladylike with sweat, hair messed all across the desk. Breathing heavy, her arms reach up and there are almost tears in the corners of her eyes from pleasure. “Lord Petyr… please…” her fingers grip his surcoat and she weakly tries to pull him down atop her. 

 

_**Petyr** _

His sweet little wife grabs his surcoat and tries to pull him on top of her. 

Not for the first time, Petyr Baelish marvels at his ability to school himself, to resist. 

What man would resist her, spread out like this, still shaking, glowing from her pleasure? 

But he must. In the light of day, when her head is cleared, Sansa will be ashamed of her wantonness, the sounds she made, the wetness she spilled into his mouth and over his desk. 

That she will run to her maid, the Imp’s whore, he has no doubt. Would she blush and stammer and ask her if she were still a maiden? Would she flush recount the way her lord husband had brought her to pleasure with his tongue and fingers not once, not twice, but  _ thrice _ as she lay spread on his desk?

He hopes she will. 

“Shh, sweetling,” he murmurs instead, gently pushing her hands away and helping her stand, pulling down her skirts. 

“I will have a bath brought up for you. Something relaxing with scents of lemon and sandalwood.” 

She seems not to understand him, still unsteady on her feet, drunk on pleasure. 

_ And I brought here there _ . It is a thrilling thought. 

“As lovely as this evening has been, and as much I would love to sleep in our bed with you in my arms, a ship from Dorne is due in this evening and the King needs me there to ensure that Prince Doran has sent all he promised as gifts binding the betrothal.” 

He strokes her hair and guides her from his office, locking the door behind him, and rings the bell. He sits Sansa down in an armchair and pours her a cup of wine, and shortly, Shae’s surly face pops into the door. 

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he says, aiming for pleasant, but her scowl tells him he was far off the mark. “My wife would like a bath. The lemon and sandalwood oils, please.” 

He kisses Sansa’s temple. 

“I shall be terribly late, my lady. Enjoy your bath and your rest. I shall see you on the morrow.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Petyr pulls her to her feet, and Sansa tries to curl into him, nuzzles against his neck.

But he is leaving her.

“N-no-!” He bundles her into his chair, and still Sansa reaches for him, lips pouting. Not even taken to their bed… on the morrow? “You have to promise. ” His mouth is near and Sansa leans in for kisses, so hungry and needy… “Promise, my lord. Not jewels, promise me…”

But Shae looms in her face, and not her lord. “My lady…” she murmurs with concern, smoothing back her hair. “What has the bastard done to you? ”

“He kissed me… between my legs, over and over, and…” Shae stares at her. “Was that wrong? ”

“No…” her dark brow looks puzzled. “But what kind of man does that, and is so cold to his wife…?”

Sansa curls up on herself, and feels empty and alone. “I don’t want sandalwood…I want honeysuckle, like home…”

Shae strokes her hair. “Whatever my lady desires…”

 

_**Petyr** _

Morning dawns and the light filters through the gauzy emerald curtains Ros has selected for his personal chambers here. He had come straight down after leaving Sansa, shut himself away, and taken his cock in hand. 

The memory of her spread out for him, the taste of her on his tongue… he’d spent in mere moments. He’d called for a bath then, scrubbing himself clean, washing his resolve back into his skin, before sliding beneath the silken silver covers Ros had chosen so long ago. 

_ Good tastes _ , he decides, taking in the room in the light of dawn. It is richly furnished, with an ebony desk and wardrobe, every color complimenting the emerald and silver throughout. 

He is vaguely aware that Sansa had chosen a similar color scheme for their apartments, and he wonders if he is so predictable. He chuckles at that. Only a fool would call him predictable. 

He dresses more slowly this morning than others, choosing his attire with even more care. Dark gray breeches with soft, supple leather boots. A foam green tunic, with a long, silvery black surcoat. He affixes the mockingbird pin so that it stands out prominently, combs his hair carefully. He rinses his mouth with lemon water and mint, before making his way home.

He wants Sansa to wonder where he spent the night after the “ship.” 

By the time he reaches their apartments, the sun is higher now, but it is still early. He eases into their rooms with care, not wanting the slightest noise to wake Sansa. From the antechamber, he can hear no noise and figures that she must still be asleep. 

Taking care to move quietly, he unlocks his office and slips in, pulling the door shut behind him.

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa stirs in the morning, and feels the emptiness of the bed beside her. All that she tried… And still she does not entice him.

But oh, how he pulls her in, this small lord of the Fingers. Sansa can’t help but remember his mouth, his fingers, his tongue… she wants what she doesn’t understand. But she understands how his tongue flicked against that one little nub. Could she do that to herself? Maybe she wouldn’t feel alone then?

Maybe she wouldn’t need him.

Lord Petyr used his fingers, didn’t he? She thinks of his mouth against her thighs, the kisses and the bites, the marks he’s left… it feels good even now.

She imagines him whispering in her ear, telling her she’s beautiful, that he adores her… sansa’s fingers search beneath her shift, where her small clothes still are absent. “Lord Petyr…” She bites her lips and begins to rub in insistent circles. “Oh, please…” her cheeks flush and her skin begins to glisten…

 

_**Petyr** _

Ensconced his office, Petyr can examine the  _ actual _ ledgers, calculating how long the wares from Dorne (of course there had been wares, just not for the King) would take to travel to where he needed them. 

He is deep in thought, calculating leagues to the Vale when a little sound pricks his ears. 

Sansa’s breathy moans from beyond the door and…

_ Lord Petyr _ . 

His heart thumps in his chest, and he lets himself slip from his seat to the doorway and opens it a crack. When he spots Sansa writhing in bed–  _ their bed _ – one hand moving furiously beneath the sheets, the blood rushes straight down to his cock.

He feels dizzy a moment, and leans heavily against the doorway, mind swimming with lust. He has half a mind to go out there and replace her fingers with his tongue again, but it is much too soon. 

Instead he retreats to his chair and pulls his cock from his breeches, stroking in time to Sansa’s little cries. 

She is so enraptured in seeking her own pleasure she will hardly think to look for him, he knows, allowing his hand to pump faster, imagining Sansa’s hand in place of his. 

He bites his lip to keep from moaning, but closes his eyes, allowing himself a fantasy where Sansa slips to her knees before him and takes the head of his prick into her sweet mouth. 

 

_**Sansa** _

“AH!” Sansa’s hips lift off the bed. In her mind, her husband is promising love to her eternal; that soon they will leave this place, and she shall be his Queen of Love and Beauty…She shivers in the bed, twitches with the pleasure her nerves endure…

But she isn’t alone.

There is a presence in the air, from the office door; her husband must have been there the whole time! She’d die of shame, except…

The door is open. She can hear… something.

… she slips immediately from the bed. Lord Petyr will never show her anything of himself, not by his own volition. But to catch him at his most vulnerable.. Oh, she aches for that.

The lady slips to the door, which is cracked open! Carefully, she peeks, blue eye wide and waiting.

He’s here. He breathes heavily, bent over, his hand beneath the doublet… what is he thinking of? Is it the same as her?

 

_**Petyr** _

He’s so caught up in his fantasy that he doesn’t notice that Sansa’s noises have stopped.

Instead, he’s picturing her pink lips stretched tight around him, so eager to please him. Those blue eyes, pupils blown wide with pleasure, locked with his.

His fist moves faster, and he relishes the obscene smacking sound of flesh on flesh, and imagines himself thrusting into Sansa, the sound of his skin slapping against hers.

He bites his lip against against the strangled moan that almost escapes when he comes over his fist.

As his heart slows, and he catches his breath, he becomes acutely aware of someone watching him.

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa doesn’t really know what a man looks like. She’s seen her brothers, sure; but that isn’t the same. She licks her lips, and knows she needs to see it before she takes him within her.

This time, she doesn’t knock. Lady Sansa enters, and quickly shuts the door behind her, blocking it bodily. “Good morning, my lord husband. ” she glances down, at his fist, and flicks her eyebrow up in interest. “You kept your word to me, you came home. ”

Careful and confident, she comes closer to him at the desk, swallowing hard. “You ate hard at work again. ” Sansa licks her lips. “Let me help. ”

 

_**Petyr** _

He tucks himself back into his breeches and does the laces up as quickly as he can, cleaning his hand with his handkerchief.

He had not expected Sansa to be so…bold. She is staring at him and licking her lips and he wonders which of the gods is testing him.

“Good morning, my lady,” he says quickly, tossing the handkerchief aside. “You are up early. I hope I did not disturb your rest.”

He wonders how much she heard, how much she saw… if she guessed his state was due to her own explorations in bed.

It would not do for Sansa to know just how much he desired her, not if he hoped to keep drawing her in.

“Have you broken your fast yet? Mayhaps we can do that together.”

He forces a smile, and checking to see that his garments are clean, he stands at his desk.

 

_**Sansa** _

Oh no, she won’t be put off this time… Sansa stands very close to her lord, fearless as a Stark. “I should like that very much. What were you laboring at so? ”

He’s laced his breeches, tis true, but the right is on her side. If she stands close enough, he’ll either collide his mouth with hers, or sit down to retreat, at which point she’ll claim her seat upon his lap.

“How did you find Prince Doran’ s ship? What treasures did you make off with? ” and were they more precious than the marriage bed? Sansa’s hands rest upon his chest; she’s been denied twice and will not allow it a third. “What did you bring for me? ”

 

_**Petyr** _

Petyr groans inwardly, sure now that he is being sorely tested. Sansa is pressing herself against him, hands flat against his chest.

It would be so easy to press her backwards to their bed, to lay her down and spread her legs and press his cock into her.

But she is still rattled from her pleasure, and Petyr cannot be sure she means it, not yet.

He gives her a quick kiss, then takes her hands in his.

“I could not bring anything from the ships, but I did notice a large quantity of lemons. I ordered lemon cakes and tarts to be brought up during tea time.”

He makes a show of looking out the room at the window.

“And if I am to join you for it, I must needs meet with the small council soon. Will you let me pass, sweetling?”

 

_**Sansa** _

Her brow draws in to an angry, red V. He really does mean to leave her again.

But Sansa doesn’t move, her feet planted, and neither does she release his hand. “You are so sure of your cleverness, aren’t you? You draw me out again and again and reveal nothing of yourself, and think I do not know? Not a scrap of skin past the wrist or the neck?”

She moves close again and dares her lord meet her eyes. “Do you think it is easy for me? To be so alone, and then be taken apart by you? It isn’t.” Sansa swallows her courage, and brushes the lord’s surcoat aside, so that her fingers dig into the supple leather of his breeches. “I want to know - I want to know what is going to happen. Let me see.” 

She looks up at him, blue eyes hot - but terribly vulnerable. “I am not afraid.”

 

_**Petyr** _

What were the words of the judgement prayer? 

_ Judge me father justly _ . 

Yes, Petyr thinks. Judge me justly. Watch how I turn  _ this _ down. 

He gently dislodges her hands from his breeches, holds them tight in his own. 

“I am sorry if you feel our exchanges have been unfair,” he says, as shortly as he can manage. Her anger will be better than this. 

“I never meant to… how did you put it? Take you apart. I know this marriage was forced on you and not at all to your liking. I will force no more on you. I am truly sorry you feel this way, my lady. But whatever lies Cersei and Joffrey have filled your head with, nothing is going to happen.”

There, he thinks. That ought to buy me time. The flat delivery, his refusal to look her in the eye. She will be wroth for days, and he will stay away again. To cool his blood and hers. 

He rights his clothes once more and pushes past her despite her protests, exiting their apartments as swiftly as he can without running.

It is not until that he is far outside the keep that Petyr Baelish curses himself for a fool. 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa stands for a moment, lost and alone in her lord’s office.

-Before she grabs the inkwell from his desk and hurls it at the wall. Shae finds her crumpled on the floor, weeping like a child, with a rag in hand. “You must help me remove the stain, he will be so angry!” Shae sighs, but orders hot water, and they scrub until their hands are black with ink.

* * *

 

The ledgers are….more difficult than she imagined.

Lord Petyr is gone again, she has not seen him since he left her that morning, and she does not look for him to come home. He sent her lemon cakes, true enough, but that alone. So Sansa refuses to pine for the stubborn man, and is true to  _ her  _ word, and works.

“Twelve…twelve hundred thousand dragons a year from business….fifty thousand out in expenditures related to business….” Sansa pokes the corner of her mouth with her tongue, but quickly flops back onto the chaise, hair flying. “Ugh, Shae! This is impossible!”

“Why try to impress him anyway? Take a lover and go back to your teas with that Tyrell girl.”

“That’s unvirtuous.” Sansa sits back up, and flips through the many pages the lord has given her. “I’m not doing this to please him. I’m doing it to  _ show  _ him - show everyone.” Through her flipping, she finds the accounts for the apartments in the keep; Sansa’s eyes light up with interest. “Shae.”

“What is it?”

“We have five separate apartments in the Keep - two are attached to this one.”

The woman rolls her eyes. “I suppose I’m to clean them.”

“No - I mean, what does he do with them? He’s never said a word…” Sansa sits back, blinking thoughtfully, sipping tea. “…Find me Lord Petyr’s steward. Bring him here.”

“-Yes, my lady, the  _ concepts  _ are not beyond me, but the records you have-”

“It’s very simple, what are you making so difficult!” The slip of a girl, not even a woman, brandishes the papers at him in frustration, as if he were an idiot. The apartments are real enough, but the numbers…He’s never seen the lord’s ledgers look like this before. Half are deep under-estimates of his income, another third extraordinary inflations. The rest are complete nonsense.

With infinite patience, the put upon steward tries quietly, “My lady-”

“Listen.” Sansa spreads out the records only involving the apartments, which is a relief, as those are the closest to accurate, in his estimate. “These five apartments - how many are allotted to him as the Master of Coin.”

“This one only, Lady Baelish.”

She smiles radiantly. “That is much better. So what of the other four?”

“The Hand rented them to my lord; they agreed on terms for ten years, and Lord Baelish paid up front. In gold.”

Sansa is puzzled again, she gazes down at the documents. For what purpose…? “What is done with these other apartments?”

“I believe one is used for extra storage. The others are vacant.” There is a long silence; Sansa studies the ledgers intensely. “My lady?”

“Thank you, you may go.” The steward is greatly relieved. “Just one thing - how much did my husband pay for these rooms?”

“Why…ten thousand dragons, my lady.”

She says nothing else, and the man takes his leave. Sansa stares and stares at the documents. “Shae.”

“Hm?” 

“If you were the Hand of the King, why would you give up so much real estate for such a time to a small lord?”

The woman’s dark brow is wrinkled with puzzlement. “What?”

“And for only ten thousand gold dragons. It must be worth three times that - five, more.”

“My lady,” Shae scoffs, “most men are lucky to see one dragon in their life. To speak of ten thousand is to speak of castles in the sky - it’s meaningless.”

“No, listen.” Sansa comes to her and takes the maid’s hand. “The Lannisters control the gold mines of the Rock. They love nothing else so much. Why let it go for a song?”

“Men who have much often do not appreciate its value.”

“Lord Tywin would….it is the richest men who are the most greedy with their coin.”

Shae considers, and nods. “That is certainly so. But Lady Sansa,” she peers into her face. “What does any of that matter?”

But Sansa’s looks are far away, desperate to understand. “The Crown needs ten thousand dragons more than it needs honor, more than it needs to keep the small within their place. All the more reason to keep Littlefinger close, to wed him to their captive…” She feels clever, but wishes she knew what any of this meant, in a practical sense. “So what is my husband’s game, then?”

 

_**Petyr** _

Petyr burns the small missive at a candle on his desk.

His steward is a shrewd man. He sent word immediate–  _ your lady wife is examining your ledgers and asking questions. advise.  _

It is good that she is keeping herself busy, then. He has no concern for Sansa and the trail of false numbers he has spun for her. She will chase in circles until she tires herself. He is impressed by the fact that she has contacted his steward though. She is more determined to…  _ unravel _ him than he had given her credit for. 

He sits at his desk and idly twirls a gold dragon between his fingers. Ros is with a client at the moment and Olyvar is managing the front. It gives him time to brood, to think, to wonder what to do with his lady wife.

Perhaps he will tell her to decorate the extra apartments. He had not wanted her to take one for herself originally, but now he might be grateful for the distance. He cannot handle another night of Sansa tugging at his breeches and licking her lips without throwing her down and fucking her until her screams echoed throughout the Keep.

Cersei has told him that Sansa rarely joins them for sewing now, and giddily asks what kind of tortures he has inflicted upon her. Petyr had only smiled at her, and assured her that his lady wife was just busy re-arranging their apartments to precisely her liking.

He sighs. He needs Sansa kept busy. 

He writes back to his steward. 

_ Let her be. Tell her the apartments are wanting. Let her tour them.  _


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally what everyone was waiting for - part one.

_**Sansa** _

It’s raining today. Great, grey drops that pool the refuse in the street and clog the sewers. It’s muggy, the city smells like rain and garbage, and Sansa stares out through the window, at the storm clouds over the bay, and has not sewed for the past quarter hour, though the work lies in her lap.

Shae brings her a cup of mulled wine and tries to cheer her. “Lemon peel in the cup, my lady.” When there is no response, the Lysene woman tucks her beneath the chin. “The silly chits in the kitchens have some gossip about one of Lady Margaery’s ladies. Shall I tell it you?”

“Has a man ever refused your bed, Shae?”

Oh gods, she rolls her eyes. “It doesn’t do to dwell on this. So he’s an idiot? You’re better off as you are, you are too young.”

Sansa turns at last. At least she isn’t crying today. “But has one?”

Shae stares at her, hand at her hip. “….Of course not.”

“You see!”

“Lady Sansa.”

“I know, I’m a stupid little girl, I’ve heard it all before.” Angry, bored, Sansa throws her sewing to the corner. “I shouldn’t care, I know that. He’s a worse liar than any here. It is my pride that stings, Shae, it’s not just the fear. I do not want to be cast aside, but I….” She looks down. “I should like to be…wanted. In such a way.”

After a very long silence, Shae sets down the cup of wine and groans, fetching the darkest and heaviest of her lady’s shawls. “I am going to regret this, I just know it.”

* * *

 

It took a great deal of arguing at the door to get Sansa into this….place. She hesitated at the threshold, gazing into a gaudy display of mahogany, gilded moldings, crimson tapestries hanging from the walls… “Why this one, Shae?”

“It’s the most expensive in the city,” she replied in her business-like fashion, pulling bits of refuse from the hems of their garments. 

“How do you know these things.”

The woman sighs. “I just know.” Sansa is left alone by a roaring fire, and feels the eyes of the many patrons and…workers upon her. If she were not so desperate, she would run- “This way, my lady.” 

Up the stairs, past so many doors with so many noises beyond them, Sansa is directed - to a large, dark wood door at the end of the hall. Shae takes her shawl for her. “I will wait for you. Nothing will happen, I swear.” Sansa actually hugs her before she goes.

The room….isn’t as bad as she feared. Large, but comfortable. A brazier casts a warm glow and gentle heat against the rain, and there is a settee strewn with pillows, not just the bed.

Waiting inside, also, is a woman - a woman true, and not a girl. Her long, golden hair tumbles to her waist, her skin radiant, her smile true. Sansa is astonished; she’s more resplendent than the Queen Regent, this Queen of Whores. “Good eventide to you, my lady. I have been told you wish to learn.” At the flushed, pained look that crosses her features, the woman gently laughs, and takes her hand. “Please, do not look so! You are not the first woman come here seeking how to please a husband, and will not be the last. I welcome it! You see, my lady, we create happiness here, if just for a moment.” She sits her at the edge of the bed, and Sansa obeys, mesmerized. “There are two types of men: those who stray because they are unhappy, and those who would stray even if they had a Queen in their bed. There’s nothing to do for the latter, it’s their nature. But the first set, a well-educated wife can win them back.” She tucks Sansa beneath the chin and manages a very small smile. “And with such a lovely face as yours, I am certain we can do wondrous work.

“Now,” she has whirled away, opening a cedar chest at the food of the bed. “First - have you taken your husband in your mouth.” She looks up to see Sansa’s horrified expression, and laughs again. “Oh, my lady! But it is much better than you think. It is the surest way to a man’s heart, true.”

“Not my husband,” Sansa murmurs, hands working in her lap. “He will not even show himself to me.”

“Hm…” She pulls a bundle wrapped in a tea towel from the chest and considers. “You may have wed a queer, my sweet lady. But we can at least entice him, and there are ways to make do with that.”

“A-a what?”

“There’s time for that education later. First, this.” She unwraps the object - and it is a tube of glass, solid, beautiful with a stripe of deep blue running through the center. It is so perfectly smooth and glittering, that at first Sansa doesn’t notice-

“By the mother!” She quickly turns away and covers her face with her hands. 

The woman laughs. “Oh, my lady, but you are sweet! I swear I have not seen one half so sweet in many a month! But you must not show fear, it is sure to drive him off. Come, come, look.” Trembling, Sansa turns again, looking first at the whore, then to the bundle in her hand. It’s….it’s not so horrible. As before, there is some aesthetic pleasure to it… “There, that is better. No fear.” The woman smiles. “You should look, if anything, awed; enraptured. ‘Oh, my husband, this for me?’“ She puts on a high voice that makes Sansa laugh uneasily. “Men want to be worshipped, dear, whatever is between their legs. Puff him like a - well - a cock. ‘Please, ser, a taste.’“

“A-a taste?”

“The skin is not at all bad. If you’re worried, clean him first. Dampen a rag and run it over his skin, it will allow you to feel him out. Then, the flavor is enjoyable, even. It’s only the end you need worry about.”

“I-” She is as red as her hair.

“There are tricks.” The woman sits beside her on the bed, takes Sansa’s hands in her own, and wraps them around the phallus. “If he is large, hold him at the base, here. You’ll control how much you take, and he’ll think you’ve taken much more than you have.” Sansa swallows. _ I can’t do this _ \- “There are two types of men in this, too: those who think your throat is a cunt and want to fuck it; and those who want you to suck them like water from a straw.”

“Oh gods-”

“Courage, little one. I know it seems awful, but little steps are enough! Here, focus on the tip, he’ll like it best anyway. It’s smooth and soft, run it over your lips.” She moves the object over Sansa’s mouth, whose eyes are wide and dark. “Now a kiss, like kissing the High Septon’s ring, hm? Worshipful, my lady.” Sansa closes her eyes. Worshipful…A soft, languid kiss she places on the glass, her lips just wrapping the tip- “ _ Beautiful _ . You’ll win him yet. Kiss all along him, and taste. Little licks. When you’re ready, you take him into your mouth, and you’ll soon know what he prefers. Now,” she puts the thing down again and takes Sansa’s hands. “If you choke a little, that is actually good. They like to feel big. Too much, and you cannot breathe. You must remain relaxed; you can also pinch your thumb-” she demonstrates on Sansa, “-and that will help.” But Sansa can look no longer, her gaze on her lap, tears in her eyes. The whore tucks her hair behind her ear and coos, “My lady, what troubles you?”

At last, the girl looks up again. “Is there no tenderness at all? No love?”

The Queen of Whores cups her face, cooing, “Oh, my lady!” Her eyes are tender. “Yes! You will know love such as to make you new again. Someone who is the extension of your soul, your body, yourself. You will live only in the moments when he’s near.” Sansa’s breath catches at the thought.

She holds an immense look of pity. “And you will lose it all.”

 

_**Petyr** _

Ros races in breathless, flushed, looking completely incensed  _ and _ terrfied. 

This doesn’t bode well in the slightest. 

“M’lord,” she chokes out, before she has fully caught her breath. “You must c-come at once. Your wife–” 

He is on his feet and gripping Ros’s shoulders so tightly he knows they will bruise. 

“ _ What _ ?” He hisses at her, pulse racing. Had Joffrey hurt her? Cersei?

Ros senses his panic though and shakes her head quickly. 

“No,” she says, calmer now that she’s had breath. “Her handmaid… her handmaid has taken her to  _ Gold.” _

His establishments have no names. He calls them by value– gold, silver, sapphire, emerald, bronze. His offices are in Sapphire– a bit removed but with all the comforts a man of his station could wish still. 

_ Gold _ he knows is for the wealthiest of men only. 

_ The Imp. Lord Tywin. Joffrey. _

He does not wait for Ros, he tears out of the doors of Sapphire, racing to where Sansa is.

It is some trap set by the Imp’s whore, surely. Petyr curses himself for not dismissing her the minute he and Sansa were wed. He curses Sansa’s naivety– stupidity, really– for following the bloody whore. 

_ I should have left her under guard, I should have– _

A white-hot rage is boiling inside of him.  _ I will have the whore murdered, her flesh stripped from her bones. I will make her suffer that is sure. Tywin Lannister and his tunnels will be revealed and I– _

He has reached the doors of  _ Gold _ and he storms in. Shayla, the hostess looks startled. He never uses the front door, never enters in such a state. 

He is only vaguely aware of some customers milling about, turning their heads to see what has happened. He slows his stride, keeps that placid expression upon his face. 

“M’lor–” but before she can get the words out he spies the Imp’s whore sitting in the corner, desperately trying to blend into her surroundings, to go unnoticed. 

He marches over to her, vaguely aware of Ros coming in now, and grips Shae’s arm as if he means to break it. To an outsider, it looks intimate, familiar. But he sees Shae flinch and he knows she is in pain. His guards, posed discreetly as customers, stand now to assist him. 

“Where is she?” He hisses, long and low, Shae turns wide dark eyes on him, feigning innocence. 

“M’lord I–” 

“ _ Where _ .” 

It is a command, not a question, and Ros points hesitantly to where Joanna’s rooms are. 

_ Of course _ . Petyr thinks.  _ Tywin’s favorite golden whore _ . He motions for two of his guard to follow and drags Shae along with him. At least she has the sense not to make a scene. 

He throws the door open and shuts it behind him just in time to see Joanna instructing Sansa on the proper way to hold an expensive glass phallus and guiding it to her mouth. 

He hears one of the guards murmur something behind him, and makes a mental note to have him killed later. 

“Fascinating,” Petyr sneers and he sees Joanna pale. The glass object drops from her fingers and shatters as it falls to the stone floor. He does not look at Sansa. 

He  _ cannot _ look at Sansa. 

They meant to make his wife into a whore, and she went along with it. 

Never mind that the image of Sansa’s lips parting to take it had boiled his blood in a different way. Never mind that  _ he’d _ wanted that for himself– to have Sansa at her most wanton, most brazen. But  _ this _ . This is not for him. This is some show of force by the Lannisters and he will not stand for it. 

He cannot let his head be clouded by lust now, even if he wants to clear them all from the room, throw Sansa back onto the bed and fuck her mercilessly. 

_ Is this what you wanted? _ He’d ask her, as he threw her legs over his shoulders, unconcerned for her pleasure.  _ To be treated as the Lannisters treat their whores? _ He’d fuck her until he came and then do it again, until  _ he _ was sated and to seven hells with what she wanted. 

He pushes the thoughts away. Lets his anger over take his lust. 

He turns to Ros, who had entered behind him at some point, silent as a shadow and ten times more useful. “I will leave you to deal with Shayla and Joanna. I trust you will remind them what  _ customers _ are, yes?” 

To one guard, he nods. “Take her–” he jerks his head at the Imp’s whore– “She has betrayed my service by bringing my wife here.”

“Take my  _ wife  _ back to my apartments and guard the door. No one enters. She does not leave.” 

He doesn’t look at her as the guards move to do his bidding, as Ros motions silently, for Joanna and Shayla to follow her. 

Dimly, as if from far away, he hears someone sobbing and begging but he ignores it. 

When they are gone, when things are blissfully silent, he leans against the locked doors and places his head in his hands. 

If he is not careful, Sansa Stark will be his undoing.

 

_**Sansa** _

“Oh, you are doing much better, see?” The woman pets her hair. “Now, I think you are ready to take-”

The door flings open, and Sansa bolts to her feet. A customer for the whore, surely, a-

“ _ Lord Petyr _ !” It’s half an exclamation and half a question. Well, she knew it.  _ I touch no one, have touched no one, will touch no one, except my wife _ , a liar even then, she’ll kill-

But oh, he is angry beyond description; shamed, no doubt, to be caught like this. But Sansa’s throat clenches at what he says for Shae, she lunges at him. “Don’t you dare, that’s  _ my  _ maid, you haven’t any right-!” Why is she crying? Great sobs now, it’s like she has broken, and perhaps she has. “Stop, my lord, will you not listen to me?  _ Stop it, I beg you, I demand you stop, stop, stop-” _

Guards have taken hold of her by the upper arm, one at each side, and it sounds as though Shae has scratched one. “Take your filthy hands off my lady-”

“Don’t  _ touch _ me, I am Sansa Stark of Winterfell and my brother shall have your head!  _ Petyr, please _ .” 

But he does not even look at her, and the men start to drag her down the hall; but Sansa will not be carted like a sack of potatoes. By sheer will alone, she wrenches free of the right-hand man, and in her most imperious tone, declares, “I am capable of walking to your master’s apartment of my own power.” He blinks as though very slightly cowed. “Do you not make way for a trueborn lady?”

* * *

 

Her husband’s apartment. What lovely women does he spend himself in here? What bastard Baelish boys are born squalling into this world because what goes on inside this room? It’s not as ostentatious as the rest of the brothel. In point of fact, it’s more like his office; dark wood panels, a smoking brazier, shelves and shelves and shelves of books. The bed is large enough, but its sheets are simple in their elegance.

Sansa has flipped the hour glass, and so at least an hour has passed. She paced the room thrice, sat, paced another three turns.  _ He cannot mean to keep me here forever _ . Not for the first time, she wishes Robb would come. 

There is nothing to do. It’s almost like the day they took her father’s head: the sudden loneliness, the helplessness, the waiting. Such interminable waiting.

She sniffs and says, “If he hurts my maid, I’ll poison his food.” If he kills her, she’ll poison his food and her own. It just feels appropriate. 

Out of desperation, Sansa pulls a tome from the shelf. Tax records. It’s as much a torture as sitting here, but she reads each line just to keep the hum of dread quiet in her min-

The lock is turning. Sansa stiffens as the dead and prays.

 

_**Petyr** _

His men have already told him how she wrenched herself away, calling out for her precious Robb to save her.

He had snorted at that. Calling out for her traitor brother when Tywin Lannister sought to make her a whore.  _ Oh, there’s rich irony in that _ . 

He leaves Ros to deal with Joanna, and Shayla, and Shae as well. He will not have them  _ removed _ just yet. Their testimonies might be useful later. 

Instead, he comes to visit his wife. His silly little empty headed wife who allowed herself to be taken to a  _ brothel _ and given lessons by a whore. 

_ You tell me only that it is my right to undress you, but here you would suck a glass cock to please the Lannisters. _

He wants to spit just that at her. To ask her if she misses Joffrey, if she would rather be a King’s whore than his wife. 

He curses himself for believing her when she’d cried to him about hating Cersei and Joffrey, He’d seen her run to Cersei and betray her own father.  _ Why _ had he expected any different? 

He wonders what Shae had whispered to her.  _ Share those ledgers with my lord and we will have him killed for you? You will be a wealthy woman and a princess again! _

He is grateful for the fake ledgers and for the loyalty of his steward. He ought to have the marriage set aside. He could flee to the Vale, unconcerned where Cersei carted her off next, once they realized the information she had fed them was naught but falsehoods.  _ Her maidenhead is still in tact, if Lord Tywin wants it. Mayhaps he wants her as his new personal whore _ . 

The thought is tempting– to leave her here to misery of her own creation, but something he cannot name stops him. Instead, he enters the rarely-used apartments he keeps in  _ Gold _ and shuts the door behind him. 

The insolent thing has made herself at home, plucking books from his shelf and reading. 

His rage swells up again, and he envisions taking her over his knee and spanking her until her arse was red and raw. There is no Shae for her to run to now, no reason he shouldn’t– at least until he finds out what information she has passed to them. There is nothing that can incriminate or hurt him, but it would look amiss if he did not at least pretend. 

“Explain yourself.” Is all he says, and leans against the door waiting for whatever falsehoods will drip from her lips. 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa looks up at her husband’s entrance, at his very uncivil greeting. Like a true princess, a queen, she rises - curtseys so low her skirts make a wave around her, and the deep cut of the bodice can be seen. “And a very good evening to you, my lord husband. It is, as ever, a rare and wonderful pleasure to share your presence.”

She rises again and folds her hands before her, fingers tightly locked and squeezing all the harder. “What have you done with my handmaid? And by what right do you lock me in here like a prisoner?”

Flushing slightly, she stammers, “A-and much could I ask you the same, my lord! For I am sorely in need of some edification!”

 

_**Petyr** _

A thousand responses race through his mind, as he takes in Sansa’s form before him. 

She rises, back straight, as proud as ever, even in the face of her utter failure. 

_ This _ , Petyr thinks drly,  _ is the Eddard Stark in her _ .

He spells it out for her as clear as he can. 

“Your  _ maid _ ,” he says, each word dripping cold disdain, “has brought you to a brothel  _ frequently _ supported by Lannister patrons. She brought you to be trained by a Lannister whore…perhaps with the aim of having you take her place.”

He knows he ought to stop himself, but he cannot help the next words that fall from his lips. 

“Tell me, sweetling, are your aims now to be our King’s wedding present?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Lord Petyr speaks, but she cannot understand him. It’s as insensible as his ledgers. Her brow furrowed, she asks, “What are you talking about?”

But coolly does he rage, glaring at her all the while, and slowly…she thinks.  _ Oh sweet Seven _ .

Sansa starts to laugh.

She cannot help it. She laughs herself red in the face. She laughs so hard she goes back onto her knees and clutches her side. She covers her mouth to stifle the giggles, and it does not work. She laughs until she cannot breathe, while her husband stares at her, commands her stop this idiocy. “Lord Baelish, who thinks himself so clever-!” Tears sting her eyes. “The biggest fool in Westeros!”

With a desperate gasp, she turns her own hot, blue glare up at him. “ _ I  _ begged Shae help me find a way to tempt my  _ husband  _ to my bed. My own lord husband, that is all. It was  _ my  _ doing. She did not even want to come, and stayed to make sure I would be safe, as she is the only one in this cursed, wretched city that cares for me at all!” She has not risen from the floor, and does not mean to. “Your…Lannister whore, as you call her, didn’t even know my name. I paid her to teach me to  _ entice  _ my husband to our marriage bed - and she was worth every coin paid, never you fear, my lord. As gentle as my own Septa.” She would like to wrench her purse - her gift from her husband - from her belt, but thinks better of it, and delicately and swiftly unties it to throw it at the lord’s feet. “You needn’t fear, my lord, the coin will make its way back to you in due course.”

_ When Robb takes the capital,  _ she thinks,  _ you will not dare to speak to me like this. Tis you who will be on your knees, reminding me of kisses and caresses, and will I not intercede with my noble brother?  _ And will she? That remains to be seen.

 

_**Petyr** _

Sansa laughs.  _ Laughs _ . 

He has half a mind to drag her by the hair out of here and into Nyssa’s rooms where she recovers from her last meeting with Joffrey. 

“Stop your childishness, Sansa,” he chides instead, hands balling into fists so tightly he can feel his pulse pounding in his hands, when she does not. 

And then… the world turns on its head. 

_ I paid her to teach me to entice my husband to our marriage bed _ . 

He stares at her dumbly and hears not at all what else she says. He is vaguely aware of her little purse of gold falling at his feet. 

_ I paid her to teach me to entice my husband to our marriage bed _ . 

The father can judge him all he wants. He’s done resisting. 

He crosses the room to Sansa, ignoring the way she startles, and grabs her hips and pulls her into a bruising kiss.

 

_**Sansa** _

She expects him to strike her, and flinches back when he crosses toward her.

She does not expect to be hauled up, into his arms. Lifted like she is only a feather by the small man.

“What are you doi- _ mrph!”  _ His mouth is on hers, swallowing her words, her breath. The lord crushes her against him, wrinkles her dress, presses their bodies together like it will never be enough, never enough- he kisses her like dying-

Lady Sansa, however, shoves -  _ hard  _ \- against his chest and has half a mind to hit him herself. “You’ll release my handmaid this instant!”

….and then he can go back to kissing her.

 

_**Petyr** _

He stumbles back a step when Sansa shoves at him, demanding the release of her maid. 

Petyr snorts. His desire for her is pushed to the side–again. He needs her to see why she cannot behave this way. He needs her to see that her trusting nature has no place in King’s Landing. 

And until she does he  _ has _ to ignore the  _ want _ of her, no matter how much he’d rather press her against the wall and lift her skirts. 

“Your maid is in the employ of one Tyrion Lannister. You might recall him as the uncle of your once-betrothed, brother to the Queen Regent, Cersei Lannister.” 

He notices the way his lady wife pales at that. 

“Tell me, Sansa, might she have had another motive in bringing you here?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

“Y-you’re wrong.” Oh, this isn’t what she wanted at all…and he isn’t even holding her again. “For what purpose would he pay for my maid? You don’t know, you’re never even there.”

To hide her tremble, Sansa turns her back on him, her hair flying in the movement. “A-and you’ll make those men of yours apologize for treating a highborn lady so!”

…She looks back over her shoulder again. “Shae knows I hate the Queen. Sh-she…When I had my first blood, she tried to help me hide it - so I would not be given to Joffrey. Shae knows everything and has never hurt me. Not once.” Not like he has.

 

_**Petyr** _

Petyr sees the doubt creeping into those blue eyes and feels the thrill of victory. 

A kinder man would leave it here, but no one has ever accused Peytr of being a kind man. 

“Shae is Lord Tyrion’s personal whore, hidden here in King’s Landing by posing as your maid. Undoubtedly she has been a useful spy…” 

He pauses momentarily, wondering how far he should go. 

“Did you ever whisper to her of Margaery’s scheme to betrothed you to Willas Tyrell? Did you never wonder how the Lannisters knew to marry you off to another.” 

Petyr makes her a short bow. 

“I have been a pawn in a Lannister scheme once, and I’ve no desire to be made so again,” he says flatly. “You might have asked Shae to bring you here, but do not doubt that a  _ real _ maid would have dissuaded you. Yours instead has given reasons for rumors to spread and ravens to fly about you.” 

He pours himself a cup of wine from the flagon kept fresh on his desk and drinks deeply, pleased by Sansa’s silence. 

“Tell me, Lady Sansa, how many young red-heads exist in King’s Landing with the Imp’s whore for a maid? Tell me, Lady Sansa, were it not for my guard, what is stopping your… _ teacher _ from informing Lord Tywin, or Lady Margaery, or Cersei that you are taking lessons at a brothel?” 

He takes another sip of wine and lets it calm him. He remembers that  _ he _ and he alone is in control. 

“Better yet, sweetling. What would have happened had Joffrey walked in on that scene? He pays a lot of gold to be here, you know. What do you think your precious maid might have done then?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa is at a loss for words, near tears.

So she picks up a square pillow, gold tassels dangling from its corners, and hits him right along one of his grey temples. She thinks Arya might have been proud of that.

“You think the world is wicked and everyone in it because that’s how you are yourself! Some people are good, and kind, and gentle! They love one another and take care of each other!”

The door is locked, no one can enter, he is here, she isn’t giving up-

Instead, Sansa flings herself at him and wraps her arms around his neck as the lord stumbles back. “Do you think of nothing but your game of thrones, your golden dragons and your schemes?”

Flat against him, she begs, “ _ When  _ are you going to kiss me?”

After this is all done, she’ll make him see how very wrong he is about Shae and everything else besides.

 

_**Petyr** _

It is not the answer Petyr is expecting, by half. 

Tears, he might have predicted. More of her fiery passions and shouting.

But this… flat against him, arms twined around his neck, begging to be kissed… 

“When you do it first,” flies from his lips, but his hands settle on her hips. “When it is no longer just a duty or a right to you, but a desire.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

It is absurd to ask a lady to make the first move. He might as well say, “When you’re knighted by the High Septon.” It’s wrong, it’s stupid-

Is coming to this place not enough? But then…could bridging the gap between them truly be worse?

Sansa doesn’t hesitate. She cannot kiss the way he does, but her mouth is on his, her thigh is trying to gain purchase against his hip, and she kisses the lord over and over and over again- “Please, Petyr, please-”

Let all rumors fly, she can’t live like this, she’ll break apart like glass- Sansa’s mouth goes to his ear, nuzzles at his neck there and she  _ whines _ . “ _ I need you so, don’t leave me, you promised, you promised _ -” 

She can’t get close enough and knows not what to do. She kisses his ear, the corner of his jaw, gently bites in desperation. “ _ Please, please, please _ …”

 

_**Petyr** _

Victory. It’s all Petyr has ever wanted. 

He captures her mouth with his, the same bruising kiss her had given her before, while his hands fly–one to tangle in her hair and angle her mouth the way he wants, the other to the front ties of her gown. He pulls them roughly, yanking them open, aware that he has broken two of them in his haste.

_ I can buy her more,  _ he thinks, but it doesn’t matter because the bodice of her dress is wide open, and Sansa’s breasts– lovely, creamy skin, full and tipped with the sweetest pink– are bare for him. Her nipples are hard already, with arousal this time, not cold. 

He does not hesitate. He bends and takes one pert nipple into his mouth, while the hand he had used to undo the ties cups at the other breast. 

The hand that was in her hair, he brings down and takes her hand. Before he can stop himself, he guides her hand to press against the hardness growing in his breeches, and uses it to stroke himself. 

“Is this what you’re begging for?” He asks, wrenching his mouth from her breast and placing wet kisses along her ear. 

 

_**Sansa** _

Her whimpers pour into his mouth as he pulls her how he wants her. Surrender is sweet and she is going limp in his embrace, every nerve on fire. 

It’s like a bad song, the way he rips her gown, and Sansa cannot even care. And he is not just kissing her bosom, but sucking at it. She wants to protest ( _ But that is for babies _ !), but it sends shocks straight between her legs, so her lord can keep doing whatever he desires…Her legs are going weak, her mouth hangs open and she cries out as he strokes her. 

Sansa gasps to feel his manhood - but she mustn’t be afraid, not now. She leans into his kisses, eyes closed and lips still parted. “Yes, yes, let me see it.” This is what she needs, what she was ready for that night on his desk, she knows now. She has the courage to squeeze her fingers against his breeches and feel him shudder against her. Something wondrous is happening here.

 

_**Petyr** _

Her slim fingers squeeze around him, and Petyr just wants more. 

He moves her hand again, this time under his surcoat and into his breeches so that she can wrap her fingers around the length of him properly. 

He moves her hand up and down, squeezing at the head the way he likes. He uses her thumb to move pre-cum from the head, and when Sansa moans at that, he has to bite his lip from spilling all over her.  

Petyr moves his hand then, let’s Sansa continue stroking him. His palms her breasts, rolling her nipples between his fingers and pinching until Sansa is uttering nonsense words. 

It is then that he remembers the image of her, raising the glass phallus to her mouth. 

He stills the motion of her hand and for a moment it looks as though she may argue. 

“Why don’t you show me what you’ve learned, sweetling?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

“W-what?” She blinks to wakefulness and is quite red in the face. “Now? But I didn’t learn much, I had only-” If he hadn’t interrupted, perhaps-

But Sansa is dutiful. Wide eyed and innocent, she sinks to her knees before him. With nervous, yet deft, hands, she pulls the laces of his breeches looser, and his cock practically springs up at being freed. 

Her eyes go wider still. “My lord, I can’t, it’s much too large-!” How is it to fit inside of her, let alone if he tries to shove it down her throat?

 

_**Petyr** _

Sansa Stark–  _ Sansa Baelish–  _ is a dream. 

Now that she is on her knees before him Petyr cannot fathom why he waited so long to have her here. To hear her praise the size of his manhood… 

_ I might have to offer Joanna more coin _ . 

He strokes her hair instead, over her cheek, cups her jaw. 

“Show me, sweetling,” he breathes. “I am at your mercy.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Well, she can’t take him down her throat, that’s certain. But she can do a little.  _ It starts with a kiss _ …

Delicately, Sansa presses her lips to the tip of his cock, just wrapping him. The fluid there is salty, bitter, a little acidic; not at all pleasant like the woman promised. But with eyes closed, she kisses again, rapturously.  _ You have to praise them _ . “It-it’s very…” She panics. “Smooth.” 

That’s probably a compliment?

She begins to kiss down the shaft, brushes her lips across arteries, to the dark hair at the base, which has no grey at all; it would have been much more amusing to see matching wings of grey, but perhaps this isn’t the place for amusement. To hedge her bet, she places soft, sweet kisses on each testicle, too, even craning to reach the underside.  _ That’s very soft _ ! This is getting better.

Sansa turns, begins kissing back up the other side - but no, that’s not enough. She’s supposed to taste. Experimentally, she licks.

…It isn’t bad. Not at all. 

Eyes fluttering closed again, she licks with the flat of her tongue, then runs the tip back up to the crest of the cock, and feels the lord shudder, hears him gasp for breath. Sansa’s blue eyes open, blinking innocently up at her husband, and is surprised to see his eyes swallowed by the black pupils. He is open-mouthed, breathing heavily, and staring rapturously at her.

….oh, she could like this a great deal.

Feeling emboldened, she takes the head into her mouth. For fear he will be one who, um…fucks her mouth like a cunt, Sansa heads that off completely by sucking - hard. A little fluid spurts into her mouth, and knowing not else to do, she swallows it down. The sucking creates the most appalling noises, but the woman was right! The skin itself tastes  _ good _ , and there is something almost soothing to suck at her lord this way. Sansa steadies herself with one hand on his thigh just above the knee, bobs her head forward and back just a touch, and waits for more instruction. 

 

_**Petyr** _

When she says  _ smooth _ , he almost laughs. Is that her idea of praise?

But the laughter dies in his throat when she begins pressing kisses up and down his shaft, to his sac, to the underside of his cock. 

He desperately wants her to swallow him down, but he lets her explore at her own pace. When she licks over the head of his cock, he does not suppress the moan that tumbles from some place deep in his chest.

Blue eyes lock with his and his siren wife wraps her lips around his cock and  _ sucks.  _

He could come there, but bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself, wanting to draw this out. But Sansa begins to bob her head back and forth and there’s nothing for him to do put tangle on hand in that red hair and draw her mouth back and forth at a pace he likes.

He is careful not to press her too far, instead he pulls her off more often, entranced by the wet  _ pop _ his cock makes every time it leaves her rounded mouth. 

There is a part of him, a large part in truth, that wants to come like this– in Sansa’s mouth, on her face, but he senses she might not have gotten so far in her lesson before he entered. 

But he’ll be damned if stops now. 

He pulls her hair back and pulls her off his cock, and motions for her to stand. 

“On the chaise.  _ Now.”  _

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa is pulled to her feet and follows obediently. “N-not the bed?” Now isn’t the time to be picky - it’s a brothel, after all - but she had hoped for something with a little more dignity…

Still, she sits with customary primness, even with her hair a mess, even with her little shoes kicked off. Her mouth is swollen and red, and a wet smear of something is at the corner of her lips. She stares at her lord and waits for instruction.

His eyes are so dark as he nears her; Sansa scoots back on the chaise and dares not look away.

 

_**Petyr** _

He should let her have more controls, but Petyr is well  _ out _ of control now. 

He pushes the ruins of the top of her dress from her, and pulls at her skirts until the offending garment is off her.

She is bare, save her small clothes, and he arranges himself over her carefully, just close enough so that his cock can graze her center through the thin, wet fabric. He takes one nipple in his mouth again, using one arm to hold himself up, and the other to brush his cock back and forth over the wet spot that blossoms by the second. 

He loosens the ties and slips them from her body, and lets his cock dip into her, just briefly, shallow, and Sansa’s hips jerk up to meet him, as if determined to take him in. 

Instead, he moves down her body, and spreads her legs wide over his arms, and dips his tongue into her. 

She is dripping already, and by the time he moves to suck at her clit, she is mewling his name above him. 

“Tell me what you want, Sansa,” he says hoarsely, taking his mouth off of her just long enough to speak. “Tell me and I’ll give it to you.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa gasps when he presses his head against her, moves himself up and down, and sucks at her breast again. It’s the greatest feeling she has ever experienced in her life, better even than his mouth that night on his desk-

“ _ Oh gods _ !” It’s the tip, it’s the tip inside of her, oh she struggles to breathe; how is it this good, how is it so  _ good _ -

Her husband pulls her hips to the edge of the chaise, and she marvels at the heat that travels over her body. It’s the way he looks at her, all of her, with wild and savage desire. She’s aching terribly.

He sucks between her thighs again and Sansa  _ writhes _ . “ _ Lord Baelish _ -!”

Her name, rough on his lips, enflames her in ways she never thought possible. She wants to hear it again and again.  _ Sansa, how I need you. Sansa, you are perfection. Sansa, I adore you _ -

She wastes no time in throwing herself into his arms, her legs wrapping his hips, her mouth at his ear, head pressed close. “I want you inside of me.” She begins to shake with fear and desire. “I-I want…I want you to…please, Lord Baelish…My husband…”

 

_**Petyr** _

Petyr doesn’t say another word.

He lifts her, easily and carries her to the bed. He sets her down gently, but wastes no time spreading her legs again, mouth sealed over her clit. 

He reaches up to cup a breast, enjoying the mix of sounds spilling from Sansa’s mouth– sighs, and mewls, and moans, and his name. 

He slides two fingers into her, pumping them back and forth, licking furiously at her clit and she comes with a long moan, hips rising off the bed. 

He slides up her body then, and hooks her legs over his arms, and presses inside her slowly. 

When he is fully seated inside her, he doesn’t move– both to give her time to adjust and because he knows he is close to spilling inside her. Sansa is heat, and warmth, and dripping wet, and she keeps murmuring his name like a prayer. 

He waits for her say so, no matter how much he aches to thrust with abandon, to come hot and hard buried deep inside her. 

 

_**Sansa** _

The rest isn’t as nice as the tip.

Sansa cries out, hands splaying across her husband’s chest, begging, “Slow, my lord, it hurts, it hurts-!” And by the Seven it does, Sansa thrashes her head back and forth to bear the pain. Lord Petyr hushes her, his hands stroking her hair, she can see the blue of his tunic beneath the sleeve-

His clothes. He’s still nearly completely dressed. With him still plunged full within her, Sansa whimpers and her fingers work the clasps of his surcoat and doublet. “I want…I want to see you…” More than just that; she wants to touch, to kiss, to have the full experience of his body rubbing against hers as he takes her over and over and over again-

She leans up enough to nuzzle at his ear, to weakly kiss him there and feel his hair against her temple. “ _ Petyr _ …hold me, please…Be sweet to me, go slow and soft…” She collapses back, hair splayed in a red fan, breasts bared for him, and whimpers, hips moving very slowly up to grind against her newly-made lover.

 

_**Petyr** _

He shrugs off the surcoat and doublet, but leaves the tunic in place. 

_ The scar _ . He cannot show that to her, not now, not yet, she will be repulsed, will pull away from  _ this _ . 

He shifts his hips slightly, moving just a little deeper and she whimpers in response. 

_ Slow,  _ she pleads with him, and so slowly he moves, a gentle rock of his hips while one hand snakes down between them to rub at her core. 

She likes that, he can tell, from her little sighs. She cants her hips up to meet him and he speeds his rocking just a little

When she starts panting again, close to her peak once more, he slows his pace, this time sliding the length of him nearly out before pushing back in agonizingly slow. 

When Sansa moans, he repeats the motion, looking down, entranced by the sight of his engorged cock disappearing into her warm, pink cunt. 

“ _ Sansa,”  _ he finds himself moaning– and he cannot help it. He picks up his pace. 

 

_**Sansa** _

He is bare but for the tunic, but Sansa meant for that to be gone as well, and she whimpers, trying to reach the ties.

But oh, he has begun to move, so slowly, so tenderly, her eyes close and she begins to speak insensibly, pleading and begging. “ _ Oh, yes, my lord, yes - just like that - oh - I…I….love it…”  _ Her fingers spread against his chest again, and it is enough that she can feel him beneath the tunic, firm skin below her fingers.

Sansa clings to him, making her body as close to his as possible. If she reaches enough, she can grab at his bare buttocks, and it makes him thrust deeper within her, so that she whines, breathing hot into his ear. “Lord Petyr…make me yours, please, please…” She is able to move a very little and it feels like there are stars beneath the lids of her eyes when they close. “ _ Gods!” _

He is saying her name like she so dreamed, and the pain is forgotten, the pace everything. Her words are just a litany of prayers: “Please, please, please…” Sometimes, “Don’t stop,” but mostly, “Please.” 

 

_**Petyr** _

She says  _ please _ , and there is nothing in the seven hells or heavens that can make Petyr stop now.

He  _ fucks _ her, as he has been dreaming of, hard thrusts that bury him deep inside her, and Sansa raises her hips to meet every one. Her nails dig into the meat of his backside, urging him for more, and deeper, and faster, and he obliges her. 

He cannot last much longer, that he knows, so he rubs at her clit until he  _ feels _ her come, her cunt contracting around him, and hears her moans of pleasure. 

He  _ wants _ to come inside her, but he knows better. A babe now would be an unwanted thing, and he will not hide moontea in her drinks. 

Petyr pulls out instead and spills on her stomach, over the red curls that cover her sex, and moans at the sight. Sansa was meant to be covered in his seed, surely. 

He slips away from her, but only for a moment, wetting a cloth with water from the bedside table and cleaning her stomach and mound, gently passing the cloth between her legs before casting it aside. 

He pulls her against him so that she is lying half atop his chest, one hand smoothing over her hair. He wonders if she can hear the way his heart pounds in his chest. 

“Are you alright, sweetling?”

 

_**Sansa** _

His speed hurts again, but it doesn’t matter. She knows he’s close and welcomes the pain, digging her nails into him, riding this out to the finish. She wants to pull him deeper on instinct, to bury him inside her when he spends himself-

But he pulls away, and she feels a slight warmth over her skin, gasping for breath. Sweat drips from her lord’s forehead, his neck, he’s sweated through the tunic at the underarms. He looks labored, too, and so enraptured. This isn’t humiliating like she thought. Sansa touches his seed with two fingers and finds it fascinating.

She purrs as he cleans her so gently, sees a little blood on the rag and is absurdly proud of it. And  _ yes _ , he pulls her close, her head and one arm resting on his chest.

Somehow, this is happiness.

She feels emptier now, without the lord’s weight inside her; stretched, sensitive, but somehow more complete. He pets her, and he runs her hands down his body, even experimentally runs fingers through the very damp hair at the base of his cock. “Why didn’t you finish inside me?” There is a part of her that is afraid; that bedded she may be, but without child…

But the evening is too precious to ruin. She snuggles deep against her lord, breathes their musk and lays kisses across his throat, his forehead, his lips- “I…I am very well.” She gazes dreamily into his eyes and feels wonderful…Like it is alright to be stark naked and cherished in his bed. Maybe it even is? “Did I do well, my lord? Do I compare to your Lannister whores?”

Sansa kisses his clothed stomach and hears him chuckle. “You’ll make those men apologize to me for treating your lady so.”

 

_**Petyr** _

Her fingers graze up and down his skin, and Petyr wishes he were ten years younger, that he might be ready to take her again. Instead, he chuckles when she makes some jape about being better than Lannister whores, and entirely  _ ignores _ her question about spending inside of her. 

“I have known no Lannister whores, my lady wife. I am just aware of who employs them. And you, as ever, are a delight. Abed or not, Sansa, you are always more than enough, do you understand?” 

He kisses her temple, giving her the romance and attention he knows she craves, but her last point still rankles, the heat from their argument creeping back up in him. 

“Sansa… you were in a brothel the Lannisters frequent. If those men pushed you, it was for your safety and no other reason. If Joffrey had found you here…”

He shudders and he knows Sansa can feel it. 

“You must swear that you will never leave the castle without guards again, and  _ never _ to a brothel. If you have a question about anything,  _ just ask _ .” 

He tries to keep his tone even, and presses another kiss to her forehead to soothe some of the sting of his words. 

“You are a woman grown now, and my wife. You can ask me anything.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa looks up at him with glittering blue eyes, worshipful in the darkness of the room. “Does that mean you will not leave me again?”

She rolls her eyes at his reminders, though, and boldly adjusts herself so that she sits in his lap - in point of fact, straddles where he had just taken her. “My lord Petyr, you misunderstand the point. Would you have anyone touch your wife so? It is an affront to  _ your  _ dignity, not just mine own.”

She leans down and kisses him; begins to nibble at his neck just below the juncture of the jaw. “But…to please my lord and master, of course I would promise to do just as he says…” Her eyelashes flutter against his skin. “And I know he would not deny me so small a request.”

She blinks, eyes aglow again, and bites her lip. What might she ask of him? “…what did you think when Cersei told you of this betrothal?”

 

_**Petyr** _

As spent as he is, the rush of arousal hits him hard when Sansa straddles him. 

He can feel the warmth of her cunt millimeters from him, and his cock twitches in interest. 

He promises he will speak to his guards– after all,  _ he _ is the only one who will be manhandling Sansa at this point, he thinks to himself. 

Already she is proving herself capable of manipulating him with her sex– fluttering lashes, sweet kisses, the promise of being sheathed again in her wet heat– he almost thinks she will ask him to release Shae or some other madness and her question about their betrothal catches him off guard. 

_ What did I think _ . 

“I thought I was the luckiest man in all of Westeros,” he supplies, and it tastes suspiciously like the truth on his tongue. “And I thought you the most unfortunate woman.” 

He takes her face in his hands and kisses her, gently. 

“I harbored no romantic notions that you wanted this match or me, my lady. I shunned your bed so many nights because I did not want you to bed me out of duty, can you understand that?”

He strokes up and down her thighs and up and down her arms, and laughs at the scene he is part of. He and his lady wife, post-coital in his brothel. He  _ never _ would have predicted that. But he must break her of this notion that he will share all his plans and keep her by his side all his moments. 

“I am a busy man though, Sansa. I cannot promise to spend every night in your bed… but I can promise you that I  _ want _ to. Is that enough?” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa is breathing hard at every word, every touch. He promises to give her what she wants, and she feels suffused with heat again. His hand is on her face and she kisses his palm.

And feels the absurd desire to slide his thumb into her mouth.

She nods, lips parted, at every word. She even smiles when he speaks of her bed. “I….I did not mean that you should never leave my side for a single moment ever again.” Her gaze drops, and she smiles. “That…that might become most tiresome.” She runs her hand over his torso. “My lord…on the morrow…might we….um….tangle, again?” 

She slides forward, sleepy, contented, and nuzzles at his throat once more. “You may not spend every night in my bed, but might we spend  _ tonight _ in this one?”

 

_**Petyr** _

Petyr has to laugh at that.  _ Tangle again _ .

“It seems you want to tangle again now, sweetling,” he murmurs, sliding two fingers between her legs where wetness has begun to pool again. 

He rubs soft circles on her clit, applying no  _ real _ pressure, but Sansa grinds down onto his hand just the same. 

By some miracle of the seven– and some combination of Sansa straddling and writhing against him, his cock has begun to harden again. 

He dips one finger into her center, dragging the moisture back up to her clit, and rubbing more insistently this time. 

“If you are too sore, I will understand,” he tells her, brushing a kiss against her lips. “Tell me to stop and I will.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

“Is it even possible?” He is so soft, she falls forward and whines, biting her lower lip. “I-It does hurt…but if you went gently, I…” She gasps to feel his finger inside of her - so nice, but not as nice as…

As his cock inside of her. She flushes to think it.

“I think I should like that very much.” Her cheeks are flushed and carefully she grinds against him, his finger slipping in and out of her, while the base of his palm applies pressure to her clit. She can feel the lord’s rings gliding against her skin and it is absurdly arousing. 

Sansa rides his hand, and one of her own grips him at the wing of grey at his temple. Her breasts bounce as she moves and she whimpers, “A-and what would me lord have of his lady, to give him pleasure?”  _ Oh gods, it makes the dampness grow even more to say that… _

 

_**Petyr** _

“Touch me like you did before, sweetling,” Petyr says, pressing his lips against the hollow of Sansa’s throat.

“Stroke me, just as you did before.” 

Sansa’s hands move exactly how he taught her, and he muffles his moan into her breast. 

His fingers continue working at her cunt– alternating rubbing her clit and dipping inside of her. She’s dripping wetness already, and when he slides two fingers into her they are barely met with any resistance at all. 

She is rolling her hips as she straddles him, and while Petyr doubts  _ anyone _ has ever told her about how a woman can ride a man, he has no doubt that she might be a natural. 

He is fully hard again, and Sansa’s continued stroking feels divine, but he wants more. 

“Ride me,” he tells her, more command than request again. “Here, let me show you.” 

He lifts her, and guides her with one hand and grips the base of his cock with the other, positioning himself right at her entrance. 

“Sink down now, Sansa. Nice and slow.” 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa is quick to do what before she begged him for.

The lord’s cock is so smooth, and so warm in her hand. There is even something to it that is pleasing to look at. It is also fascinating to watch him grow turgid, how the one vein bulges around the shaft. His tip leaks and Sansa bites her lip as she swipes her thumb across as he had her do before, watching him shudder as she does so.

She may win his affections yet…

“W-what?” Her head snaps up at his directive. “What, like a horse? I-”

Oh no - this is not like riding a horse.

Sansa lowers herself, balancing on her knees; the tip is still alright, and she tilts her head back and pants. Her long hair brushes his thin legs. If she goes any lower, however- 

She whimpers. “Petyr, it hurts.” She stays where she is; perhaps it would be alright if he just thrust in and out with this first inch or so? Sansa pulls at the ties of his tunic, much easier to reach from this angle. “Let’s make off with this….”

 

_**Petyr** _

He swallows her protestations with a kiss. Gently removing her hands from the tunic. 

Gently,  _ gently  _ he begins to thrust, just moving his hips a little. He keeps one hand rubbing her center, and with the other he holds her waist, guiding her down each time his hips cant up.

The shallow thrusts are killing he though– he wants to be buried fully in her and… mayhaps if he were… she’d forget the blasted tunic. 

In one swift move, he arcs his hips up and uses the hand on Sansa’s hip to pull her down. 

Being fully sheathed in her is  _ glorious _ , and he throws his head back in a moan. 

 

_**Sansa** _

“ _ Ah _ !” Sansa falls forward, tears in her eyes. “ _ It hurts, it hurts, it hurts _ -” Her lips work against the lord’s throat and she begs. “Make it stop hurting…”

But Lord Petyr is so good, so talented, he does…Whispers hush into her ear, runs his hands down her hair and back. Slowly, the heat builds again and it doesn’t hurt as badly. Sansa bites her lip, but makes better use of her mouth by kissing him instead. “Oh, my lord…” Her whine is desperate and beautiful. “Make me yours again, please…”

With effort, she sits up, and begins to rock a little on his lap, gasping to feel him press against…something, beneath the bone of her pelvis, that is hot and wonderful. She covers his hands with her own, pulls them across her body so as to show him where she wants to be pet - which is everywhere simultaneously, but his left hand she keeps on her breast.

“S-say…say I am your lady fair…say how good I am.” She brushes her lips across his knuckles and gazes into her husband’s face, blue eyes dark and hot, and swollen lips parted. The pink of her tongue is just visible, and Sansa moves with a touch more vigor.

 

_**Petyr** _

“You are all that and more, Sansa. You are  _mine.”_

When she begins to move faster, he knows he can move as he pleases now. One hand at her breast, the other at her waist, he thrusts his hips up more frequently and Sansa matches him for every movement. 

He is loathed to remove his hand from her breast, but he knows he will spend soon and he is determined to make Sansa come over his cock again before he does. 

He brings his thumb back to her nub and circles insistently, applying constant pressure and Sansa’s rhythm breaks. 

She is close, he can tell, and he sits up a little, re-situating himself so that he can take a nipple into his mouth. 

“Come for me, sweetling,” he tells her, closing his mouth around the nipple and biting gently. 

 

_**Sansa** _

Lord Petyr need not labor so hard: his mouth, his  _ words _ , are enough.

His little bride clings to him, holds his face against her breast; bucks hard in chase of orgasm and comes  _ gloriously  _ \- and a little loudly - in his arms and on his lap. 

“ _ Petyr, Petyr, yes, yes! Say it again, say it again _ !” Is she screaming? Sansa can’t tell. She just knows she needs to be a part of his body, that she  _ needs  _ so much. She rides until the last twitches of the climax leave her, until she puddles over him and looks at the small lord with such breathless devotion he could do  _ anything _ and she would say, “Oh, my lord,  _ thank you _ .” 

She, in fact, refuses to be separated from him, and says, “Stay inside me, Petyr, I want to keep you there…stay…”

 

_**Petyr** _

She pleads for him to  _ stay within her,  _ but he knows it would be foolish to do so.

When her fingers reach for his tunic again, he flips them over so that he is back on top and pins her arms above her head. He’d seen the way she looked at his chest, and concerned with what she saw, he thrusts in earnest, losing himself in her the way he’d once fantasized. 

He stops to readjust her legs, burying himself deeper, and her little moans cheer him on. 

And when he is close, so nearly there–

He pulls out of her warmth and spends on her stomach, nearly up to her breasts, her name like a prayer on his lips. . 

 

_**Sansa** _

Sansa whines, glistening with sweat, and him. “Why…why again…” Petyr cleans her carefully once more, and when he returns to the bed, her legs lock around his hips and she attaches herself over his chest.

With the tunic still on. All she’d done was kiss at the collar when she collapsed over him, seen a bit of bone. What was there to be so manipulative over?

….does he not wish her to see something? Know something?

Oh, but she is so tired, so very tired…it’s enough to hear his heart beating beneath her ear, to smell him, touch him, taste him still on her lips… “Put your arms around me…” she murmurs. “Stay with me….”

With his heartbeat to lull her, the young lady is almost instantly asleep. 

 

_**Petyr** _

Sansa is asleep in moments, and as much as he is loathed to keep her here for a night, he knows it would be crueler to move her. The  _ Gold _ is as safe as any place of his though, and he is through denying himself the pleasures of his wife.

He grants her wish and wraps an arm around her. For the first time in their marriage, he will share their bed through the whole night and wake up at her side in the morning. 

But he knows she will be wroth again in the coming days… he’d forgotten to mention that Cersei was sending him to treat with some minor lords in advance of Joffrey’s wedding…


End file.
